Computer-aided drug design specialist Proteus International Plc, Marple, Cheshire, has reported yet more losses and still no products ready to sell, despite saying this time last year that 1994-95 would see modest revenues. New chief executive Jurek Sikorski, who took over from managing director John Poole, one of the company’s founders, admitted, in the face of losses of ú7.9m, that last year’s claims of revenue were over-optimistic. Poole is now deputy chairman. Sikorski said the company had only established its business and marketing department in 1994 and it was only in the last quarter of the year that any commercialisation of products it has been researching, had taken place. Our investors are not very patient, he said, but in February the company did manage to raise ú2.6m from institutional investors from a new share issue. But despite last year’s experience, chairman and co-founder Kevin Gilmore struck an upbeat tone in his statement, saying that The increasing number and pace of negotiations… together with significant expected revenue…gives me continuing and increasing confidence in our future. And Sikorski, the company’s first ever chief executive, said there would finally be some income this year but not from the sales of products, which wouldn’t happen for another three to four years given the need for clinical trials and government approvals. Revenues will be generated via deals made with pharmaceutical companies keen to work with Proteus in bringing the research company’s work to commercial markets, he said. They will pay money either in the form of direct research expenses or for the privilege of entering the deal, and eventually they’ll have a product they can sell, although Proteus will retain intellectual rights. The drug most likely to be first to market is one that potentiates the effect of vaccines and Proteus has signed half a dozen deals with pharmaceutical companies in relation to this product. It says it has had considerable interest in its DNA binding technology, which it is developing with US firm Genelabs Technologies Inc through a joint venture company, Progene. Proteus has also changed the focus of its work in an attempt to give its investors a return for their money: it is abandoning research on animal medicines – remember the promised chemical castration drug? – and is concentrating on human medicine, specifically four therapeutic areas where its potential drugs will have the greatest likelihood of success; infectious diseases, inflammatory disorders, cancer and cardiovascular disease. This, however, has increased the level of research and development spent to ú8.1m, from ú6.8m. A Convex Exemplar 16 processor supercomputer was installed to make more of the company’s Prometheus molecular design software and computational facilities generally expanded. But it has made 10% of staff redundant, bringing the total number to 85, in order to cut costs.
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