Biovista

Company Profile

Biovista is a drug repositioning company established in 1993 with offices in Charlottesville VA, USA and Athens, Greece. Biovista's repositioning programs leverage the company's technology platform to identify suitable drugs and reposition them in isolation or in combination with other drugs to therapeutic areas that are currently not covered by existing products. 

By selecting drugs that already satisfy basic toxicity, ADME and related criteria, Biovista is able to deliver significant value at reduced cost and in dramatically shorter time frames than is normally the case. Biovista's technology not only repositions drugs but also de-risks them, by profiling potential adverse events before these happen. Therefore the technology together with the benefit, addresses the risk side of the equation, namely the adverse effects profile, making for much more balanced predictions of the clinical outcome of the repositioned drug. 

The company has initiated its own drug repositioning efforts in several conditions, where the drugs profiled and screened meet two major criteria:

• they display significant biological plausibility as potential therapies for the new indications and
• there is no prior art in the patent or scientific literature linking them to the new indications. In addition, drugs are screened for at least equivalent efficacy with current standards of treatment, and with equal or lower risk profiles.

Target Partners & Collaborations

Biovista is seeking business development opportunities of 2 kinds: Collaborations with biotech and pharma companies in connection with its drug repositioning program and services. The company is looking either for partners who will acquire Biovista IP with the goal of further developing it into a drug (either internally or through the creation of NewCos) or engage Biovista for its repositioning and Adverse Event prediction services in connection with the partner's own drug development efforts. Biovista's current IP is in the area of CNS diseases as well as AMD. Additional TAs will be added in the second half of 2009. Investment: Biovista is seeking to raise US$ 20-40M to accelerate and broaden its present repositioning program. The proceeds will be used almost exclusively to generate patents for repositioned drugs ready to enter Phase IIa trials. Biovista has already raised in late 2008 and 2009 US$ 3+ M from investors and its own revenue stream in the US for the purpose of creating its current IP portfolio.

Technology and R&D

Biovista products are developed using its proprietary Discovery AlgorithmicsTM platform. Discovery AlgorithmicsTM is running off one of the world's largest MySQL databases. Currently at over 4 billion rows and 19 million records, this resource supports the company's own repositioning program as well as diverse client projects ranging from AE profiling to clinical hold situations. The company has an active R&D program that aims to deliver high value treatments as well as tool and services in support of the life sciences industry. Biovista's current repositioning program is focused on CNS and eye disorders with additional therapeutic areas being added in 2010. Since September 2008 Biovista has submitted 5 patent applications on 12 drugs, in multiple sclerosis (MS), epilepsy and macular degeneration (AMD). BVA-101 and BVA-201 have shown statistically significant efficacy in animal models of MS and the company is currently exploring out-licensing opportunities. The company is currently running efficacy experiments for all its repositioning programs.

Clients & Collaborations (INTERNATIONAL)

Biovista's network of clients and collaborators includes large biotech and pharma companies as well as top-tier universities in the US and Europe. Biovista's clients include: Millipore, Promega, Wyeth, Qiagen, Biogen Idec, Novo Nordisk, Novus Biosciences, Cempra, Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, UC Davis and University Hospital of the Saarland. Collaborators within EU projects include Unilever, France Telecom, EBI, IBM, EMBL, Fraunhoffer-IPSI, Universities of Liverpool, Geneva, UPM, Manchester, Innsbruck and others. In January 2010 Biovista announced its collaboration with the FDA on the prediction of Adverse Events.