MANILA, Philippines — A P30-million government research eyes the sale of an "immunoliposome" cancer drug delivery license to multinational Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc. (JPI) which may open up a big and entirely new drug innovation industry for Philippines.

Funded by the Philippine Council for Health Research and Development (PCHRD), the cancer research program by state-funded National Institute of Molecular Biology (NIMB) and two other institutes have started talks with Janssen.

"I cannot preempt Janssen, (but) we have communicated with them our intention. I expect to have more definite words from them," said Dr. Jay Enrico Lazaro, in an interview, during a presentation of "AMOR 2: Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics of hCC49 Immunoliposomes in Nude Mice."

This project is part of a Department of Science and Technology-led interagency High Impact Technology Solutions (HITS) for which PCHRD also seeks financing for sustained implementation.

"We don't keep our limited investments for health research secret because we're aware that that's how we can raise funding," said Dr. Jaime C. Montoya, PCHRD executive director. He explains that a single drug really takes $1 billion to produce from basic research to clinical trial, and technology packaging and marketing.

Filipino drug researchers are optimistic of the country's potential licensing of this cancer drug delivery system as it aligns with the global trend on "biologics" which is overtaking research on new drug substances. Biologics are medicinal products created through biological processes and can consist of sugars, proteins, or nucleic acids or their combination or of cells and tissues and other living organisms.

Lazaro said NIMB's work together with the institutes of Chemistry and Biology – University of the Philippines – is very similar to what Japan is working on. Being still a pioneering work, this offers Philippines huge economic potential.

Being a state-of-the-art drug system where the drug destroys cancer cells exclusively, it offers a high price of P50,000 per 20 milligram (mg) once marketed. And yet it pays for cancer patients to take such drugs since it avoids omits a breast cancer treatment situation that normally involves one-third chemotherapy and two-thirds treating its side effects.

"We don't have a pharmaceutical industry to speak of. Nobody works on biologics for commercial use. We're at a terrible disadvantage when it comes to our risk. But what I'm counting on is the novelty of our product. It's difficult to copy this antibody," said Lazaro.

NIMB's intention is to sell the license or partner with Janssen or other firms at the drug research's initial stage. Here, it can flow back its initial capital for further research investments.

The first product is a license on the linker which "links" the antibody and the liposome which contains the cancer drug that should be delivered to the cancer cell. Immunoliposomes combine antibody-mediated tumor recognition with liposomal delivery, according to "Seminars in Oncology."

"This linker, the phospholipid, has IP (intellectual property) issues (which we cannot disclose because we're patenting it)," Lazaro said.

The second product for patenting and sale is the antibody.

"The antibody that we're using, we engineered it. It's not yet patented. We just have to do a few experiments on the material, and then we can proceed to patenting it," he said.

Janssen is the target market for these products since it owns a drug-carrying liposome branded Caelyx priced P44,000 per 20 mg in the market. Caelyx is administered intravenously to breast cancer patients. NIMB plans later to go into drug research for other cancer types such as liver.