Nuformix plc (LON:NFX) Executive Director Dr. Dan Gooding caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss recent patents for NXP002 & NXP004, highlights from interim results, and what’s next for the company and its programs.
Q1: Dan, you’ve announced a patent update covering both Nuformix NXP002 and NXP004 programs, but could you just remind us what those two programs are and just provide some more colour on what these patents cover and how they’ll assist the progression of the programs?
A1: So, as you rightly said, Nuformix is a drug development company focused on repurposing, repurposing is the reuse of known drugs, and this has been shown to have a reduced risk in terms of the development of new therapies. So, from a demonstration of safety perspective, a demonstration of efficacy perspective, sometimes repurposing approaches can offer some quite significant benefits in that area so that’s what the company is about, mostly at the scientific level.
At a commercial level, as a drug development company, the business is concerned with developing its programs up to a point of proof of concept, and then looking to find a development partner for those programs to take them on through further development stages and then eventually obviously onto market.
In order to be able to do that and have an out-licensing event, as we term it, what are out-licensed are our patents so the update that we put out, as you said, was exactly about our NXP002 and NXP004 programs.
NXP002 is our lead program, which is concerned with the development of an inhaled treatment for lung fibrosis. For those not familiar with this disease, this is a high mortality condition that has greater mortality than certain cancers and is currently quite poorly treated. There are existing therapies out there, but they don’t really halt the progression of disease.
We have a proprietary drug form for a molecule that has been shown to demonstrate both antifibrotic properties in terms of inhibiting that progression of scarring of the lung and also an anti-inflammatory profile as well in terms of then halting some of the biological processes that lead to that initiation of scarring events.
We had a grant of two patents, the first of those patents relates to the actual proprietary drug form itself, this proprietary drug form is what enables the solution to previous problems the drugs face in development in terms of being able to use it as an inhaled therapy for the treatment of this condition. So, this first patent actually protects our invention in terms of that novel drug substance. The second patent that we had announced that actually granted was then the actual use of that novel drug substance in the treatment of a condition specifically fibrotic lung diseases.
So, the first patent that protects the drug substance was already granted in the US and Japan, and this final grant, if you like, from the European Patent Office represents the last grant into a major global biotech territory, shall we say.
So, in our efforts to go out and find development partners, this is exactly what our development partners will want to see. They’re going to want to see that we have robust patent coverage that protect numerous aspects of how we envisage the drug treating diseases in a novel way and that those patents are granting in all of the major commercial territories.
That’s exactly what we’re seeing play out with the patent estate that we have for NXP2, but also the patent estate that we have in NXP4.
Q2: You’ve also released interim results for the six months ended 31st of March 2024. Could you just run us through the highlights for that period?
A2: The results, I think, show progression in the business. I think that they demonstrate that we are continuing to take a really lean-burn approach to managing the company as we look to establish a development partner.
What we see is that the company is able to progress its patents and prosecuting its patents and securing those patents in multiple geographies and we’ve been able to achieve that. They also demonstrate that we’re able to progress the development partnering discussions that we’re having as well, which are ongoing.
So, just as the highlights really, the announcement demonstrates that we are able to progress the business under those conditions.
Q3: Following the progress that you’ve outlined, what’s next for Nuformix and both NXP002 and NXP004?
A3: I think really those that are familiar with the story would understand that our efforts are unchanged in a way. We continue to seek development partners, we continue to progress discussions with a discrete number of companies and look to find a suitable partner that allows us to take these two programs forward towards the next development stages.
So, it’s a really commercially-focused activity with which the business is concerned at the moment.
