e-Therapeutics

Drug discovery outfit e-Therapeutics claims 'great progress' in development despite a 15% increase in annual losses to £2.25m.

The Newcastle-based company explains that it had to increase spending on clinical development in the year to January, while there were no revenues because it has not yet fully developed any of its products. But chief executive officer Malcolm Young, a former royal research fellow at Oxford University, says that e-Therapeutics is making great progress in the development of two drugs – ‘Syncovair’, an oral treatment for asthma, and ‘Viotra’, a treatment for depression – with both drugs about to begin Phase III clinical trials.

He declares that e-Therapeutics has ‘the opposite problem to every other biotech firm in that we actually discover too many drugs'. Young leads an e-Therapeutics team developing a cure for superbug MRSA, with the drug ETS 1153 now in the development stage.

With cash of £2.88m, the company is currently burning it at an annual rate of nearly £2.2m. But the professor says profits are expected sometime in 2012/13 and jokes that in five years he expects ‘Aston Martins all round for shareholders’.

Highlighted by Growth Company Investor at 37p in February, the shares have eased to 35p. However, e-Therapeutics' recent clinical progress is creating the potential for significant gains.