Companies: MPM   

Neurological drug developer Minster’s potential migraine-preventing treatment Tonabersat will have completed enrolling for its crucial Phase IIb trials this month and sector expert Joseph Lofft has been appointed to help secure it a better commercial deal.

Lofft launched and oversaw the growth of Johnson & Johnson’s Topamax migraine prevention treatment that has now exceeded $1bn of sales but sees its patent expire this year. Minster’s chairman John Russell says Tonabersat is aimed at this very same market and has already proved to generate fewer side-effects.

Results from Tonabersat’s 500-person trial are due to be reported in early 2009, and if the trial is successful the company will sign a lucrative out-licensing deal with a large partner. Recent full-year results revealed that £11.8m remains of the £17m cash Minster raised in March last year, and Russell estimates that getting to the end of the current phase for Tonabersat will cost ‘another £3m’.

Minster’s strategy involves keeping overheads low and outsourcing all drug trials. ‘We’re not a drug discoverer,’ says Russell, explaining that ‘We in-license promising candidates, develop them to proof-of-concept stage and then out-license them.’

In the year to March, research and development spending grew to £4.3m (2007: £1.2m), causing Minster to generate a loss of £4.9m before tax. Spending this year will again mostly be focused on Tonabersat, with a second drug candidate to reduce cognitive decline in schizophrenics on the back burner for now. ‘We’re managing our money carefully,’ assures Russell, who believes that current cash will be at least ‘sufficient’ to fund development over the next two financial years.

The shares, once 152p at a much earlier stage of development in 2006, have crumbled on liquidity issues and doubt about Tonabersat’s potential. A buy, but for risk lovers only.

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Minster Pharmaceuticals	AIM	£8.54m	14.50p	-0.75p
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Minster’s key tonabersat trial underway			07/12/2007
A more palatable pill			05/10/2007
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Minster raises �£17 million and consolidates shares			02/03/2007