Up to now, Cambridge, MA-based Alkermes has been known primarily for the drug delivery technology that it has supplied to partners like Johnson & Johnson and Eli Lilly. But at the company's R&D day today, CEO David Broecker is shifting the spotlight to its pipeline programs as it nears the launch of a mid-stage trial for a new addiction therapy.
Alkermes in-licensed a proprietary library of opioid receptor compounds a couple of years ago from the lab of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Mark Wentland. Primarily the focus of pain research, Alkermes has been studying the role opioid receptors could play in treating addiction and believes that it's on a path to create blockbuster therapies out of the library.
ALKS-33 "is what we hope is a novel chemical molecular entity for addiction, probably alcohol dependence," says the CEO in an interview with FierceBiotech. Because the drug is not metabolized through the liver, it could be a safe drug for alcoholics with impaired livers. And it could be used to treat opiate dependence as well. A Phase II study for 33 should get started by the end of this year, he adds, with top-line data available in the first half of 2010.
ALKS-36 is a combination product that will take a pain medicine, yet to be determined, and combine it with Alkermes' compound to address constipation commonly associated with chronic pain medications. That should be in Phase I by the end of this year.
"I joined Alkermes eight years ago from Eli Lilly," says Broecker, adding that he was always intent on advancing new drug therapies. "We want to develop and commercialize our own product."
- read the Alkermes release for more info
ALSO: Investors, though, are still very much focused on the fate of exenatide, a diabetes drug advanced by Alkermes with Amylin and Lilly. Alkermes stock sank a few days ago as doubts about a new diabetes drug from Novo Nordisk raised concerns about a new extended-release form of exenatide currently in development. Report