PART I
ITEM 1. BUSINESS
This Form 10-K (including the information incorporated by reference) contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, that involve risks and uncertainties including, but not limited to the uncertainties associated with research and development activities, clinical trials, our ability to raise capital, the timing of and our ability to achieve regulatory approvals, dependence on others to market our licensed products, collaborations, future cash flow, the timing and receipt of licensing and milestone revenues, the future success of our marketed products and products in development, our sales projections, and the sales projections of our licensing partners, our ability to achieve licensing milestones and other risks described below as well as those discussed elsewhere in this 10-K, documents incorporated by reference and other documents and reports that we file periodically with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These statements include, without limitation, statements relating to our ability to continue as a going concern, anticipated product approvals and timing thereof, product opportunities, clinical trials and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) applications, as well as our drug development strategy, our clinical development organization, expectations regarding our rate of technological developments and competition, our plan not to establish an internal marketing organization, our expectations regarding minimizing development risk and developing and introducing technology, the size of our targeted markets, the terms of future licensing arrangements, our ability to secure additional financing for our operations and our expected cash burn rate. These statements relate to future events or our future financial performance. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “expects,” “plans,” “could,” “anticipates,” “believes,” “estimates,” “predicts,” “potential” or “continue” or the negative of such terms or other comparable terminology. These statements are only predictions and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, including the risks outlined under “Risk Factors,” that may cause our or our industry’s actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, levels or activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements.
Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. We are under no duty to update any of the forward-looking statements after the date of filing this Form 10-K to conform such statements to actual results.
Access Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (together with our subsidiaries, “We”, “Access” or the “Company”) is a Delaware corporation. We are an emerging biopharmaceutical company focused on developing a range of pharmaceutical and medical device products primarily based upon our nanopolymer chemistry technologies and other drug delivery technologies. We currently have one marketed product, two products at Phase 2 of clinical development and several products in pre-clinical development. Low priority clinical and pre-clinical programs will be dependent on our ability to enter into collaboration arrangements. Certain of our development programs are dependent upon our ability to secure approved funding for such projects.
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MuGard™ is our marketed product for the management of oral mucositis, a frequent side-effect of cancer therapy for which there is no established treatment. The market for mucositis treatment is estimated to be in excess of $1 billion world-wide. MuGard, a proprietary nanopolymer formulation, has received marketing allowance in the U.S. from the FDA. We launched MuGard in the United States in the fourth quarter of 2010. We are continuing the training of our third-party MuGard representatives on the product, on the oral mucositis condition and on our sales strategy. MuGard prescriptions are growing quarterly and we have placed emphasis on our sampling and marketing efforts to build demand, grow oncologist awareness and increase payer uptake. MuGard has also been launched in Germany, Italy, UK, Greece and the Nordic countries by our European commercial partner, SpePharm. Our China partners have received an acceptance letter from the State Food and Drug Administration of the Peoples Republic of China which provides marketing approval in China.
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Our lead development candidate for the treatment of cancer is ProLindac™, a nanopolymer DACH-platinum prodrug. We initiated a study of ProLindac combined with Paclitaxel in second line treatment of platinum pretreated advanced ovarian cancer patients in the fourth quarter of 2010. This multi-center study of up to 25 evaluable patients is being conducted in France. A second combination study was initiated in the fourth quarter of 2011 combining ProLindac with gemcitabine for the treatment of cholangiocarcinoma. Clinical studies of other indications including liver, colorectal and ovarian cancer are under consideration by Jiangsu Aosaikang Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd, our licensee for ProLindac in China. The DACH-platinum incorporated in ProLindac is the same active moiety as that in oxaliplatin (Eloxatin; Sanofi-Aventis), which has had annual sales in excess of $2.0 billion.
Thiarabine, or 4-thio Ara-C, is a next generation nucleoside analog licensed from Southern Research Institute. Previously named SR9025 and OSI-7836, the compound has been in two Phase 1/2 solid tumor human clinical trials and was shown to have anti-tumor activity. We are working with leukemia and lymphoma specialists at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and have initiated additional Phase 2 clinical trials in adult AML, ALL and other indications.
CobOral® is our proprietary preclinical nanopolymer oral drug delivery technology based on the natural vitamin B12 oral uptake mechanism. We are currently developing a product for the oral delivery of insulin, and have conducted sponsored development of a product for oral delivery of a number of peptides and RNAi therapeutics. We have signed agreements with with several companies regarding the sponsored development of CobOral drug delivery formulations of proprietary and non-proprietary actives and are in discussion with several other companies.
CobaCyte®-mediated targeted delivery is a preclinical technology which makes use of the fact that cell surface receptors for vitamins such as B12 are often overexpressed by certain cells including many cancers. This technology uses nanopolymer constructs to deliver more anti-cancer drug to tumors while protecting normal tissues.