Investors waiting "When you cut through all the detail, this could be a drug that is very significant for the treatment of Huntington's", Rick Stewart, Amarin CEO

Amarin Corp is a $25 million British company that licenses and sells drugs to treat nerve disorders, like Parkinson's Disease. Amarin's chief executive, Rick Stewart, hails from SkyePharma a British drug developer.

Stewart says that Amarin's research partner, Laxdale of Scotland, will follow up any day now on preliminary findings from a Phase III study of LAX-101, a treatment for Huntington's Disease. "This is the first time we have seen anything positive for Huntington's," says Stewart, who is shaking his head about the market's treatment of the preliminary findings.

A study of 83 qualifying patients took place at Harvard, Emory and Johns Hopkins universities, and in the United Kingdom and Canada. Huntington's, a genetic disorder, has been diagnosed in about 30,000 Americans and an equal number of patients in Europe. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted LAX-101 a so-called fast-track designation.

Stewart says investors are almost certainly awaiting the detailed findings of the late-stage clinical trial. Such findings, due out this month, will shed light on whether the drug regressed Huntington's symptoms in patients who are in varying stages of the disease.

"This is the first time we've had a genetic rating system for a pharmaceutical product," Stewart said in an interview. A genetic test determines the CAG score for Huntington's, which lays dormant for years. A score of 35 or higher indicates the presence of the disease. A score of 50 to 60 usually indicates a chronic case that will leave a patient with as little as five to eight years of life.

The executive says he would be ecstatic if the findings show that LAX-101 regresses symptoms in 90 percent or more of those with CAG repeat scores of less than 45. Laxdale will present the detailed findings to the FDA in late January.

"When you cut through all the detail, this could be a drug that is very significant for the treatment of Huntington's," he says. If the drug attains U.S. approvals, Amarin would receive 55 percent of all revenue, which its Marin County, Calif., sales force would generate.

Such a drug could fall into the $500 million yearly sales category, Stewart figures.

Source: www.marketwatch.com, 16-Sep-2002

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