e-Therapeutics is a drug discovery and development company. The company possesses efficient proprietary methods for discovering new bioactive compounds, de-risking candidates against efficacy and safety, discovering combinations of compounds with specific therapeutic effects, and discovering surprising new indications for existing compounds.

e-Therapeutics is based in the UK and India, with links to other companies and organisations across North America and South East Asia.

Systematic Drug Discovery

Scientific advances in complex systems science at Oxford and Newcastle Universities led to the foundation of e-Therapeutics. Our scientists discovered methods for untangling complex biological networks to show their functional structure, and methods for accurately predicting and explaining the effects of multiple interventions in a complex network. Multiple interventions sometimes cause highly counterintuitive, difficult-to-predict effects, such as the bizarre “paradoxical restorations” in neurology. The original application of these methods was in neurology.

The application of these methods to drug discovery began in 2003. Almost all the processes that underlie life and disease are mediated by complex networks of interaction between proteins and other molecules. e-Therapeutics’ methods are a powerful platform for understanding what the structure of these networks means for function, dysfunction and mitigation.

In addition, drug molecules affect multiple proteins and not just their primary target. Because of these multiple interventions in complex networks, the biological effects of a molecule's interactions with pathogenic, pathological and normal cells have historically been very difficult to predict.

e-Therapeutics’ quantitative methods for calculating the effect of a molecule’s multiple interventions in the networks within very many different cell-types enables a new approach to evaluating the efficacy and safety of molecules very early in development, and a new approach to searching for compounds that bring benefit to patients who are poorly treated by current medicines. 

Drug Discovery Programme

e-Therapeutics proprietary discovery program is focused on areas of high unmet medical need, for which there are good quality proteomics data. Discovery projects are underway in Alzheimer’s dementia, age-related macular degeneration, atherosclerosis, prostate cancer, and pain, in partnership with several companies.  

Drug development programme

e-Therapeutics is developing candidate new medicines in anti-infectives, depression, respiratory disorders, atherosclerosis, pain, and cancer.

The antiinfective projects are a topical antibiotic for resistant gram-positive infections (ETX1153a: Mersanex), which is partnered for registration trials in India with Klab, an I.V. antibiotic for acute hospital based bacteraemia (ETX1153b: Amersib), and an oral medicine to treat Clostridium difficile overgrowth (ETX1153c: Clostriban).

The antidepressant (ETS6103: Viotra) has shown pleasing efficacy and safety features in Phase II, and is partnered for registration trials in India with Klab.

ETX9101 (Orovair) is designed as an oral once-daily that reduces the risk of exacerbation in inflammatory respiratory disease. It has shown pleasing efficacy and safety features in Phase II, and is partnered for registration trials in India with Klab.

ETX6107 is designed as a quadrivalent treatment for atherosclerosis which lowers LDL cholesterol, diminishes vascular inflammation, reduces carbohydrate cardiovascular risk factors, and has anti-adipogenic features. It is intended that it will enter an initial clinical effectiveness trial in 2010, with Infinitus Clinical Research.

ETX6218 is intended to provide a multivalent treatment option for fibromyalgia, in which chronic pain, tender points, sleep disturbance and depression are addressed. It is intended that it will enter an initial clinical effectiveness trial in 2010, with Infinitus Clinical Research.

ETS2101 is a novel chemotherapy for metastatic melanoma that has shown promise in preclinical testing, being more potent than cisplatin in multiple cell-lines. It is a selective apoptotic and not a cytotoxic, which effectively turns back on the self-destruct mechanism in cells that are so badly damaged that this mechanism has failed. Such cells are almost exclusively cancer cells, and so the candidate carries a low burden of side effects. It is intended that it will enter an initial clinical effectiveness trial in multiple metastatic cancers in 2010, with Infinitus Clinical Research.

Candidate evaluation programme

Drug development, especially in its clinical stages is expensive. It is also very risky, since the great majority of candidates that are evaluated in clinical trials fail. The two principal risks lie in efficacy and safety, and the information derived for IND filings prior to clinical stages plainly does not adequately predict efficacy and safety in Man, evidenced by the large number of late stage failures.

e-Therapeutics provides a different approach to de-risking molecules for efficacy and safety, based on its ability to evaluate quantitatively the effect of a molecule on target cell types, and on non-target, normal cell types.

This evaluation service is used as a decision support tool by investors prior to investment or to guide investment decisions, and pharmaceutical companies prior to investing their resources in clinical programmes for candidates developed in-house or before in-licensing candidates.

e-Therapeutics evaluation is also used to help determine the mode of action of molecules, to identify appropriate positioning against competitive drugs, and to identify and characterise possible drug interactions.

e-Therapeutics sometimes uses these capabilities to evaluate canadidates for acquisition into the company’s own proprietary pipeline.

Pipeline portfolio