Removing toxicity

Liver toxicity or unmanageable pharmacokinetics have killed a lot of drugs over the years. But with this week's announcement of Phase I safety data for a nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitor that had been shelved due to toxicity, Heidelberg Pharma AG believes it now has sound evidence to prove that its Enhanced Pro-Drug Technology (EPD) platform can salvage problem compounds. The inhibitor is Heidelberg's third drug candidate with good safety data where the original compound had failed.

The core of EPD is a set of specific carrier molecules, originally discovered at Boehringer Mannheim GmbH, now Roche (SWX:ROCZ, Basel, Switzerland). ...