Dupharma Biotech forms R&D partnerships for new therapies

MoUs with Centre for Affordable Diagnostics & Therapeutics Limited and PAMOJA Therapeutics BV seek to repurpose anti-malarial drug artesunate for cancer therapy and other applications

KUALA LUMPUR, March 14, 2024 -- Duopharma Biotech Berhad ("Duopharma Biotech") recently entered into Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) with the UK-based Centre for Affordable Diagnostics & Therapeutics Limited ("CADT") and PAMOJA Therapeutics BV ("PAMOJA") from the Netherlands for a drug repurposing research involving the manufacturing of Investigational Medicinal Products (IMP) for clinical trials in Malaysia and subsequent commercialisation.

"Duopharma Biotech is pleased to have the potential to collaborate with the Centre for Affordable Diagnostics & Therapeutics and PAMOJA Therapeutics on this important research that seeks to discover new uses and indications for existing pharmaceutical products. As a leading Malaysian healthcare company with a vision of 'Providing Smarter Solutions for a Healthier Life', we believe that research into expanding the benefits of well-trusted pharmaceutical products is one way to ensure that patients can have more options to choose from in a shorter time span. In addition, there are more avenues for manufacturing widely-used pharmaceutical products such as artesunate, which can contribute to improving access to treatment options, in line with our ESG focus on improving access to healthcare," said Leonard Ariff Abdul Shatar, Group Managing Director, Duopharma Biotech Berhad.

CADT is a social enterprise (not for shareholder's profit) set up to facilitate and development pipelines for affordable diagnostics and therapeutics for infectious diseases and cancer, focusing on developing affordable and highly accessible novel therapeutics. The Centre, which acts as an accelerator between international entities and the Malaysian ecosystem established and launched the International Affordable Diagnostics and Therapeutics Alliance (IA-DATA) in Kuala Lumpur in December 2023, marking a significant step towards addressing global health challenges, including infections, cancers and non-communicable diseases. The alliance is built upon three strategic pillars, namely developing affordable point-of-care diagnostics, exploring drug repurposing for existing medications and advancing molecular pharming for cancer immunotherapies and diagnostics. Among IA-DATA's Initial Pilot Projects for 2024 is a collaboration with the University of Malaya on drug repurposing studies using antimalarial drug artesunate.

The MoU between Duopharma Biotech and CADT seeks to explore potential areas of mutual cooperation and technical collaboration for drug repurposing and other strategic areas within the scope of affordable diagnostics and therapeutics for many diseases.

"All of us need to be able to afford ways to manage illness when it strikes. This means we should be able to diagnose diseases like dengue that are increasing in so many regions, and to treat cancers with effective but affordable drugs. Those are the types of solutions that CADT aims to deliver through partnerships developed in Malaysia," said professor Sanjeev Krishna, Director, Centre for Affordable Diagnostics & Therapeutics Limited.

Meanwhile, PAMOJA Therapeutics BV is a specialty pharmaceutical company engages in development, partnering and commercialisation of an artesunate product portfolio, established as a joint venture between Dutch-based Avivia Projects BV and K&B Papertex beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH. Focusing on offering generic formulations of artesunate including those intended for monotherapy, or customised novel formulations of artesunate, to R&D entities such as CADT, Pamoja is also actively developing an oral combination therapy and intravenous administration of artesunate for the treatment of malaria.

The MoU between Duopharma Biotech and PAMOJA seeks to explore collaborations on the manufacture of pharmaceutical products for repurposing. Duopharma Biotech will specifically collaborate with PAMOJA in the manufacturing of artesunate for clinical trials into the use of artesunate in novels indications in Malaysia.

"Artesunate could be a game changer in affordable cancer therapy and we are therefore thrilled to connect with Duopharma Biotech as our local manufacturing and distribution partner in Malaysia and surrounding countries," added Hans Platteeuw, Director, PAMOJA Therapeutics BV.

If you detect any issues, problems, or errors in this press release content, kindly contact [email protected] to notify us (it is important to note that this email is the authorized channel for such matters, sending multiple emails to multiple addresses does not necessarily help expedite your request). We will respond and rectify the situation in the next 8 hours.