WisBusiness: Mithridion evolves, joins forces with Ohio drug discovery firm

By Brian E. Clark

WisBusiness.com

MADISON – If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

For nearly two years, Mithridion scientists worked to develop drug technology to stop the death of neurons, the process that leads Alzheimer’s disease.

The prospects looked so convincing, in fact, that Mithridion won the 2005 Governor’s Business Plan Contest and a nearly $100,000 award that helped launch the company.

The company also got a lot of good exposure by winning the contest, which led to the investment of several million dollars by backers.

But if Trevor Twose has learned anything in his the second half of his career as a serial start-up entrepreneur – the first half was spent working for a major pharmaceutical company – it’s that not all drug prospects produce the results anticipated.

So late last year, Twose and his colleagues were forced to abandon efforts based on the work of UW-Madison pharmacy professor Jeff Johnson and researcher Thor Stein, who is now at Harvard.

Their work had indicated that a protein called transthyretin protected neurons in brain cells from dying. Mithridion developed four unsuccessful drug compounds based on that concept.

“We were disappointed, obviously, but it didn’t have the therapeutic effect we wanted,” Twose said philosophically, noting that only a minority of drug candidates are successful.

Now, the company has shifted gears and joined forces with Cognitive Pharmaceuticals of Toledo, Ohio. The new company will be based in Madison and retain the name Mithridion.

The merger is a good fit, Twose said, because Cognitive also was working on an Alzheimer’s drug, one that appears to be successful in preclinical trials. He said Cognitive was about to file an investigational new drug application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Cognitive’s drug candidate is ready for clinical trials, he said. If successful, it could replace a transmitter molecule — acetylcholine — that’s deficient in the brain of Alzheimer’s patients. In lab tests, it has been shown to improve memory and cognitive function, he said.

Twose said the two companies discussed merging last year, before Mithridion’s drug lead fizzled. The talks were initiated by Madison’s Venture Investors.

“We’d all along wanted to have additional projects in our portfolio, so this was already in the works,” he said. “And we’d already done a lot of work in our labs on the Cognitive compound.”

Last week, Mithridion officially announced the takeover, which is being funded by $2.3 million in financing led by Madison-based Venture Investors.

Twose acknowledged that the demise of Mithridion’s first project made obtaining financing for the merger more difficult.

“It made the negotiations more difficult with all the parties because of complications, naturally,” he said. “But we overcame that and successfully closed the deal.”

With its experience with the first Alzheimer’s drug candidate, he said Mithridion is now one of several Wisconsin companies that can take a drug lead all the way into clinical trials.

The others, he said, are Quintessence, Bone Care and Deltanoid.

“Drug discovery isn’t easy,” he said. “And large companies work for years and years on solving problems with a particular drug.

“People say to me, ‘how can you do it when it takes all the resources of a large company?’ The answer to that is that we just focus on one area and we have capabilities as good as the drug companies with that area.”

Now, he said, the big push will be to get Cognitive’s drug lead into clinical trials, which should happen this year.

“Sooner rather than later,” he said. “And we are well on our way.”