LOWER CHOLESTEROL TREATMENT BREAKTHROUGH

GORDON, Sydney, Australia, Aug 30 (Bernama) -- The American offshoot of Australian biotech Noxopharm, Nyrada, believes it is within reach of achieving a major advance in the treatment of cardiovascular disease. It has made important progress with a drug candidate known as NYX-330 that Nyrada believes may be the next breakthrough medication for heart attack and stroke. NYX-330 is designed to lower cholesterol levels by inhibiting the action of a protein known as PCSK9 which has become one of the most highly valued targets in the pharmaceutical world since its discovery about 13 years ago. A drug that successfully inhibits this protein has been hailed as potentially rivalling the US$12 billion annual sales a few years ago of the anti-cholesterol drug, Lipitor, the biggest selling drug the world has seen. PCSK9 has become so important because it is now understood to be the reason why the 'statin drug', the key cholesterol-fighting drugs, don't work as well as they should in many people. Having a combined treatment with a statin drug and another drug to block PCSK9 function is what is driving a major race in the pharmaceutical industry to find a PCSK9-inhibitor that doctors and patients will embrace. Owen Dempsey, US-based executive director of Nyrada and biotech entrepreneur, explained the size of the opportunity, with about 1 in 4 Americans over the age of 45 (about 32 million men and women) now taking statin drugs and accounting for why this is the biggest drug category in the world with combined sales last year of US$19 billion. "As good as statins are, they can do with extra help to bring cholesterol levels down to ground-floor levels in most people," he says. "The opportunity we are chasing is a drug that could become a standard co-treatment with statins to deliver those desired levels. A co-treatment to a $19 billion market is a very substantial market." Dr Graham Kelly, who is chairman of Nyrada and managing director of Noxopharm, explained the science behind PCSK9. "PCSK9 works by holding cholesterol in the bloodstream, slowing down its removal from the blood," he says. "That's a normal function. The problem comes when our bodies make too much PCSK9. The result is reduced clearance resulting in higher cholesterol levels in blood." "We now know that one of the consequences of statin therapy is an increase in PCSK9 levels, a normal response on the body’s part to less cholesterol being produced in the body." The discovery of PCSK9 in 2005 triggered a major push by the pharmaceutical giants to develop a PCSK9 inhibitor that could be given in conjunction with a statin drug. It was a simple rationale – the statin drug would reduce the amount of cholesterol being made in the body, and the anti-PCSK9 drug would mean that what cholesterol was made would be more readily removed from the blood. A tablet with the same features as the statins - convenient, daily, affordable, oral - was the goal.

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