The FINANCIAL — Sales at Mabion, the listed biotech firm, topped PLN 1.85m (€0.45m) in the second quarter of 2011, compared with PLN 0.11m (€0.03m) a year earlier.
The result was sharply ahead of the company’s own expectations, which were in the region of PLN 1m (€0.24m). Net loss also narrowed substantially in Q2, despite higher expenditures related to in-house R&D projects. As a result, cumulatively in the first half of the year Mabion generated revenues of just over PLN 2.17m (€0.52m), a more than ten-fold increase over a year earlier, though its net loss almost doubled to nearly PLN 0.6m (€0.14m).
In its quarterly report the company attributed the strong revenue growth to strong demand from external clients for R&D services applying Mabion’s technologies for making recombinant proteins, which can be used to produce biotech drugs.
Mabion is currently working on seven R&D projects, including four in-house ones. The most advanced of the latter is MabionCD20, a candidate monoclonal antibody for treating lymphoma and rheumatoid arthritis, which has entered the upscaling phase. In June Mabion signed initial agreements with two contract research organisations to begin work on clinical trials of the drug, and completed preparations for a pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) study of the medicine that will compare its deposition patterns and effects with those of Roche’s MabThera.
The three other projects, all of them candidate monoclonal antibodies, include: MabionHER2, a medicine for treating breast cancer, which entered the analytical method development phase; MabionEGFR, a drug to be used in the treatment of colorectal cancer, head cancer and neck cancer; and MabionVEGF, a medicine for lung, breast, colorectal and kidney cancer.
In the third quarter Mabion aims to obtain Main Pharmaceutical Inspectorate (GIF) clearance to launch a new line for producing medicines for clinical trials at its R&D/production facility in the Lodz Special Economic Zone.
www.pharmapoland.com
Discussion about this post