Concert gets $4 million milestone in GlaxoSmithKline collaboration; progresses drug candidates

US drug developer Concert Pharmaceuticals says that it has achieved a $4 million milestone in its strategic alliance with UK pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline (LSE: GSK) for its HIV protease inhibitor (HIV-PI) development program, as part of a two-year old accord that could generate a total of up to $1 billion for the US firm (The Pharma Letter June 2, 2009).

In the HIV development program a number of deuterium modified-versions of atazanavir were evaluated preclinically, and a subset was selected for further testing in early human clinical studies. Based on the human data, CTP-298 was selected as the lead compound for further development. Concert expects the program will advance into initial clinical efficacy trials in HIV-positive patients next year.

Roger Tung, president and chief executive of Concert, said: “For this contractual milestone our lead candidate met certain clinical criteria that included improved pharmacokinetics, as compared to atazanavir in healthy human subjects. Achieving those criteria demonstrates the potential of selective deuterium substitution to clinically improve compound performance and represents a significant advancement in our program.”