By Karen Pihl-Carey

DuPont Pharmaceuticals Co. and Pharmasset Ltd. have joined together in a collaboration worth more than $30 million to develop compounds to fight HIV and hepatitis B virus (HBV).

For Atlanta-based Pharmasset, the two-year renewable agreement includes an equity investment, an up-front payment, research support, milestones and royalties on products that come out of the collaboration. More specific details were not disclosed.

The collaboration is for "a particular compound," said Alan Roemer, vice president for business development of Pharmasset. Through the collaboration, the company hopes to discover other related compounds for HIV and HBV that could lead to more milestones, royalties and funded research, he said.

The collaboration will focus on the creation and identification of novel nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs), a new class for Wilmington, Del.-based DuPont, which already has protease inhibitors and non-NRTIs in development.

"Obviously, having a partner and research collaborator like DuPont is a great opportunity we're very pleased with," Roemer told BioWorld Today. "It helps us bring our compounds from the research stage to the clinic a little bit faster."

Nicholas Teti, president of DuPont, said the agreement would put his company in a strategic position in the HIV and infectious disease markets, assuring that it will have a drug in development in three classes of antiretroviral therapy. DuPont's once-daily non-NRTI, Sustiva (efavirenz), already is on the market for use in combination therapy. It has four other non-NRTIs in preclinical development.

Raymond F. Schinazi, the principal founder of Pharmasset - which stands for "pharmaceutical assets" - and three other founders have been associated with the discovery of several nucleoside analogues, including stavudine, lamivudine, emtricitabine (FTC), clevudine (L-FMAU) and DAPD. Schinazi, who is a professor at Emory University in Atlanta, helped form Pharmasset in May 1998, along with scientists from Emory, the University of Georgia and the University of Alabama.

The company focuses on cancer, HIV, Epstein Barr virus, herpes simplex virus, cytomegalovirus, HBV and hepatitis C virus.

"The discovery and development of these novel nucleosides and the strength of this organization really relies on the chemistry know-how [of the founders and employees]," Roemer said. "We have veterans in the field of nucleoside chemistry and, ideally, we're trying to bring NRTI compounds to the clinic. We have a very extensive compound library, still to be explored and evaluated."

The company doesn't intend to take its compounds through clinical development, though. It will take them as far as an investigational new drug application or Phase I/II trials, then join with third parties for development and production, Roemer said.

Pharmasset's library includes more than 8,000 nucleosides and several hundred polyoxometalates. The company received $3.91 million in venture capital funding in June from BB Bioventures LP and associated funds that are managed by MPM Asset Management Investors, of Cambridge, Mass.

On top of the one with DuPont, Pharmasset has two other collaborations in place: one made in June 1998 sublicensing its navuridine technology to Novirio Pharmaceuticals, of Cambridge, Mass., and Paris, and one made in November 1998, sublicensing its navuridine technology in Latin America to Microbiologica, of Brazil.

"We also want to work with the government, of course, and we are trying to get SBIR [small business innovation research] grants through the NIH [National Institutes of Health], which isn't revenue, but it helps us continue the research effort," Roemer said. "And we do plan to go public. Our targeted time to begin the process is really a year or less."

Schinazi is a scientific adviser for Triangle Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Durham, N.C., which also focuses on new drug candidates for HIV and HBV. Triangle expects to file new drug applications for its non-NRTI, Coactinon (emivirine), by the end of the year and for Coviracil (emtricitabine), an NRTI, in 2000.

Pharmasset currently has its thymidine kinase product in clinical trials that began in June. "That drug went from the lab to clinical trials in maybe six to eight months time," Roemer said.