Phytopharm to extend trials of obesity drug

[bongme]

hi

The Independent

By Stephen Foley

12 April 2002

Phytopharm, the company trying to develop drugs from plant extracts, is set to launch big new human trials of an appetite suppressant based on a cactus found in the Kalahari Desert of southern Africa.

The company's development partner, Pfizer, the world's biggest drugmaker, is understood to have given the project the go-ahead, and official confirmation is expected within weeks.

Phytopharm said yesterday that it was ramping up production of the cactus, known as a Hoodia. The succulent plant has been used for centuries to stave off hunger among the San people in southern Africa, and Phytopharm believes it can be commercialised as a pill for obesity in the West.

The US market for obesity drugs is estimated to be worth in excess of $3bn (£2bn). Phytopharm has promised to share some of the proceeds of its work on the Hoodia plant with the San people.

Richard Dixey, chief executive, said: "We released data in November which showed the drug achieved a 30 per cent reduction in food intake in a placebo-controlled trial, and everyone was very surprised and very pleased. There are no successful orally-taken obesity drugs around."

A new manufacturing unit in South Africa has been built, the company said, allowing it to quadruple production of its drug. Observers said the company would not have gone ahead with the new facility without securing Pfizer's agreement for large-scale trials. Phytopharm shares were up 4.5p to 470p yesterday.

Shares in the company have been erratic performers, shooting as high as 880p at the start of last year, but tumbling back after one of the company's most-hyped products, a treatment for baldness, turned out to be less effective than E45 moisturising cream.

Meanwhile, GW Pharmaceuticals, which was set up by two of Phytopharm's original founders to develop drugs from cannabis, had news of its own progress yesterday.

It is extending trials of its under-the-tongue painkiller, which is made with cannabis extracts. GW is the only company with a licence to cultivate cannabis for medicinal use and reckons that, if the spray proves effective, it could have a product on the market early in 2004. The company said it was going to start testing the drug on sufferers of spinal cord injury and of neuropathic pain. It is already testing the drug on people with multiple sclerosis and cancer pain.

Bongme