Conduit Pharmaceuticals is a clinical-stage specialty biopharmaceutical company that began operations in early 2019, to facilitate the development and commercialization of clinical assets to address the unmet medical needs of patients, through our exclusive relationships. Our unique approach allows us to act as a “conduit” whereby we focus on clinical assets from pharmaceutical companies that have otherwise been deprioritized and fulfil our mission to accelerate the development of new treatments for patients.
Conduit is led by highly experienced pharmaceutical executives: Dr. Freda Lewis-Hall, former Chief Medical Officer of Pfizer Inc., and Dr. David Tapolczay, former Chief Executive Officer of the United Kingdom-based medical research charity LifeArc. Our management team includes active senior clinicians who have an extensive understanding of the pharmaceuticals market, which supports our strategy of developing clinical assets in a cost-efficient manner while focusing on therapeutic efficacy and patient safety.
Conduit has an exclusive relationship and partnership with St George Street Capital (“St George Street”), a biomedical charity based in the United Kingdom. Conduit has the option to fund 100% of the development of clinical assets that are initially licensed by St George Street from AstraZeneca AB (PUBL) (“AstraZeneca”). In most instances, AstraZeneca has conducted initial pre-clinical and, in some instances, clinical trials on these assets, but has decided to license them for further development.
Conduit evaluates the clinical assets held by St George Street to determine which assets to fund for further development. In connection with the funding and development of clinical assets, Conduit evaluates and selects the specific clinical assets to be developed and collaborates with external Contract Research Organizations (“CROs”) to run clinical trials that are managed, funded and overseen by Conduit. We intend to leverage our comprehensive clinical and scientific expertise in order to facilitate development of clinical assets through Phase IIb trials in an efficient manner by using CROs and third-party service providers. Conduit believes that successful Phase IIb trials of the clinical assets in its pipeline will increase the value of such assets.
Conduit will seek to license assets following successful clinical trials to large biotech or pharmaceutical companies, typically for milestone payments and retain a royalty income stream for the life of the asset patent. Conduit anticipates using any future royalty income stream to develop its asset portfolio in order to balance its potential future income streams with new debt or equity financings.
Outside of our relationship with St George Street, Conduit is free, and intends, to pursue additional relationships and/or partnerships with third parties for the licensing of further assets which are currently deprioritized. We plan to focus our efforts on developing clinical assets to address diseases that impact a large population where there is no present treatment or the present treatment carries significant unwanted side effects.
Our initial licensed clinical assets are focused on idiopathic male infertility and autoimmune diseases or immunodeficient conditions like uveitis, preterm labor, renal transplant rejection and Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis. Our initial assets which were licensed from Astra Zeneca to St George that will be developed by Conduit are known as AZD5904 (a Myeloperoxidase Inhibitor) and AZD1656 (a Glucokinase Activator). As the clinical assets have undergone initial pre-clinical and clinical testing conducted by AstraZeneca, Conduit is able to assess the safety data generated in these clinical trials to assess which clinical assets to further develop and for which indications.
Initially, Conduit will focus on assets to which it has access, through its relationship with St George Street and St George Street’s relationship with AstraZeneca, to the active pharmaceutical ingredients (“API”) that were used by AstraZeneca in conducting its clinical trials. As a result, Conduit does not have to develop the API, which is often a time consuming and expensive process, and benefits from the fact that the API was produced by a reputable pharmaceutical company, which is subject to rigorous quality control measures so that the API that is used by Conduit for additional clinical trials is likely to be more consistent in terms of the quality and performance.