BOTHELL – Nastech Pharmaceutical Co. has strengthened its ownership of a promising obesity treatment by acquiring additional patent rights to a hormone that controls appetite.
The Bothell-based biotechnology company announced Monday it bought the worldwide exclusive rights to research done on PYY at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Cedars-Sinai will receive license fees and future payments as Nastech’s PYY drug is developed.
PYY – short for short for Peptide YY 3-36 – is a naturally produced hormone that helps to produce the “full” feeling most people experience after eating. Studies have shown that obese people may produce less PYY than others.
With that in mind, Nastech has been testing its nasal spray form of PYY since last fall.
In a recent phase 1 test, it noticeably reduced the appetites in nine of 11 patients. The nine patients who showed results consumed an average of 23 percent fewer calories when they ate lunch an hour after taking the nasal spray.
That test also showed the drug seemed to have some effect for up to 24 hours after patients took a dose.
The rights Nastech acquired from Cedar-Sinai includes the only existing U.S. patent relating to the use of PYY to control appetite, according to the company.
Cedars-Sinai’s research on PYY was directed by Henry Lin of the University of Southern California.
“I think the approach to the problem of obesity has largely focused on getting people to eat things they don’t want to eat and getting people to eat less. That approach, as we know, has a very high failure rate over the first year,” Lin said.
Lin believes that using a physiological control, such as PYY, could be a more successful approach to obesity, especially over the long term.
With obesity affecting more than 20 percent of U.S. adults as of 2001, according to a 2003 study, PYY also could be hugely lucrative for Nastech. The company hopes to begin phase 2 tests on its spray later this year, said Steven Quay, Nastech’s chairman and president.
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