Bionomics and SAFC Pharma sign manufacturing contract

Australian drug discovery company Bionomics and SAFC Pharma, the custom manufacturing group within US-based Sigma-Aldrich Corporation, have signed a manufacturing contract to produce 1.5kg of BNC105, Bionomics' lead cancer compound. The material will be used to complete pre-clinical trials and for Phase I/IIa clinical trials of BNC105.

'We are delighted to be selected for the production of this initial batch of BNC105. The agreement reflects our ability and reputation in cGMP chemistry scale-up, enabling our customers to take their products into clinical trials quickly and efficiently,' said SAFC president Frank Wicks.

'The GMP manufacture of BNC105 will be assisted by virtue of the fact that it has been discovered using our MultiCore synthesis technology that gives concise, efficient synthetic access to drug candidates in a manner that is applicable to scale-up and GMP manufacture,' stated Dr Bernard Flynn, vice president chemistry at Bionomics. 'This is a feature that is too often overlooked in drug discovery, leading to expensive delays in the subsequent development of drug candidates for clinical trials.'

BNC105 is a new type of drug called a vascular disruption agent (VDA) that acts to rapidly shut down the blood supply within a tumour, thereby starving it of the oxygen and nutrients it needs to survive. VDAs have significant clinical potential as they may potentially be applied across a very wide variety of cancer types, including colon, lung and breast cancers.