LONDON – E-therapeutics plc has completed a corporate reformulation, cutting four of six in-house preclinical projects and now aiming to find partners for candidates generated by its pioneering systems biology drug discovery platform.

Following the retrenchment, the company is funded to the end of 2019. Recently appointed CEO Ray Barlow said he believes that provides enough time to secure some meaningful deals.

"The platform works and this approach to biology is becoming more attractive. We do have finite cash and we are going to use it effectively to get external validation," Barlow told BioWorld.

His show of faith in a platform that is yet to deliver commercial value 14 years after E-therapeutics was founded rests on an external review of the technology, initiated by Barlow after joining the company in April. The review confirmed the novelty, productivity and utility of the platform and its potential to generate new and better drugs, at a faster rate than other small-molecule discovery technologies.

"The full platform was not in place until 2014," Barlow noted. While the core network biology is the same, there is now far greater analytical and machine learning power, and a far greater reservoir of 'omics, protein-protein interaction and chemical structure databases on which to draw.

"Previously, it was an academic tool; now it is an industrial tool," said Barlow.

When it was spun out of Newcastle University in 2003, E-therapeutics was one of the early movers in applying systems biology to drug discovery, using a network-driven approach to unravel the ways in which a compound interacts with the multiple proteins it encounters, and how those different proteins interact with one another in the networks they form within cells.

The result is a comprehensive view of the effect of a compound and its metabolites on the different proteins with which it comes into contact.

That has advantages over conventional technologies, which focus on the action of a compound on a single target, ignoring much of the complexity of biological systems.

E-therapeutics initially applied the technology to look for drugs that could be repurposed, catapulting several programs into the clinic. But there was a double whammy early in 2016 when the two leading products, ETS-6103, a controlled-release form of the painkiller tramadol, which was being developed as a treatment for depression, and ETS-2101, the synthetic cannabinoid dexanabinol, under development for treating solid tumors, both delivered equivocal trial results.

That led to the departure of founding CEO Malcolm Young in July 2016, and the appointment of the U.K.'s leading biotech turnaround specialist Iain Ross as executive chairman.

Ross subsequently closed the in-house clinical development function and cut 17 active preclinical projects down to six.

Now Barlow has trimmed even further. Internal discovery efforts are focused on two immuno-oncology programs, with all other programs available for out-licensing to validate the platform.

"A systematic comparison of the programs and the investment required to generate more data showed the two immuno-oncology programs were the best to continue to invest in," said Barlow. The other programs are at the point where "we could credibly try to license them – we won't invest further without external validation."

The drug discovery platform now has an established and tested user interface, meaning third parties can work with the technology. It is intended to approach pharma companies to propose collaborative projects using the platform.

However, Barlow said E-therapeutics is not in the business of fee-for-service. "We have shown we can generate potent hits; we have to share in the upside," he said.

Having joined E-therapeutics from a business development role at Amgen Inc., Barlow has looked at thousands of companies and opportunities from the buy-side of the industry. It was the confluence of biology and informatics E-therapeutics embodies that convinced him to take the job.

"Applying artificial intelligence and machine learning will be the next wave of innovation in the industry, and we sit right at its heart," said Barlow.

In addition, the market dynamics favor E-therapeutics' approach, with increased pharma interest in the network view of biology and disease.

Whilst putting programs to one side to await out-licensing, E-therapeutics has plans for new network feasibility projects in triple-negative breast cancer, tumor microenvironment, neurodegeneration and fibrosis.

E-therapeutics started 2017 with £14 million (US$18.2 million) cash in hand and is expecting R&D tax credits to boost that to £19 million.

At the same time as seeking to realize value from the platform, Barlow also will shape the company for potential acquisition. "I'm not shut off from the bigger picture of how [E-therapeutics] fits into a bigger organization," he said.