LONDON (ShareCast) - (ShareCast News) - Synairgen announced on Wednesday it had narrowed its operating loss for the six months leading to 30 June thanks to "excellent progress" made in the development of its Lysyl Oxidase-Like 2 (LOXL2) enzyme inhibitor, and its AZD9412 (SNG001) programme.
The respiratory disease drug discovery and therapy development company said that its pre-tax loss narrowed slightly to £1.58m at 30 June from its £1.69m figure a year earlier due to a fall in research and development costs and £25,000-worth of revenue booked in the half.

Synairgen said its LOXL2 compound, created in conjunction with Pharmaxis, and aimed at supporting idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) inhibition, was set to enter phase one trial status by the end of its fourth trading quarter.

In a separate Wednesday announcement by Synairgen, the company said that it had conducted further analysis of clinical data received from its partner, AstraZeneca's, INEXAS trials, revealing positive results from SNG001 showed for 48% of patients suffering from a respiratory virus, as well as posting "statistically significant changes" in morning lung function and asthma control of virus-positive "difficult to treat" patients that had received inhaled interferon (IFN) beta.

However, Synairgen did note that due to the unexpectedly low exacerbation rate of less than 10% in the INEXAS trial population, the economic viability of the drug could be limited, leading it to design a short trial for the winter of 2017-18 as part of an effort to further evaluate the potential of SNG001 in the treatment of chronic pulmonary disease (COPD).

"We have long been conscious that COPD is the key target market for a broad spectrum antiviral such as SNG001. Until recently, the difficulties of patient selection and the associated cost of the required trials made it prohibitively expensive to pursue. The fact that high viral exacerbation rates are now evident, combined with the launch of an effective diagnostic for viral infections, means that a COPD programme is now both highly attractive and economically viable," said Richard Marsden, chief executive officer of Synairgen.

"Finally, our new analysis of the INEXAS trial data suggests a complementary result to our previous trial indicating that we can improve important clinical endpoints in the lungs, which increases our confidence as we move into the significant opportunity that is COPD," he added.

As of 1600 BST, shares had edged forward 10.70% to 11.90p.

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