124 Business View - February 2015
DelMar Pharmaceuticals is driven to fill gaps in care continuum
DelMar Pharmaceuticals is developing drug candi-
dates that target orphan cancer indications and repre-
sent market opportunities in the hundreds of millions
of dollars in North America, and potentially billions of
dollars worldwide. Its primary aim to develop products
that will have both a high impact in patient care and a
high return for investors.
An accelerated-timeline development model enables
the company to use existing clinical and commercial
data from myriad sources to reduce technical risk and
support new regulatory filings with the U.S. Food and
Drug Administration, Health Canada and the European
Medicines Agency.
An orphan drug is a pharmaceutical agent that has
been developed specifically to treat a rare medical
condition, which itself is referred to as an orphan dis-
ease. It is often easier to get marketing approval for an
orphan drug, and other incentives – such as extended
periods of exclusivity – are provided to encourage the
development of drugs that might otherwise lack a suf-
ficient profit motive.
Orphan designations, too, have yielded breakthroughs
that might not otherwise have been achieved.
“We’ve always been focused on moving something for-
ward to solve an unmet medical need, and doing it in,
hopefully, the most streamlined manner,” said Jeffrey
Bacha, who co-founded DelMar with Dennis Brown and
now serves as its chairman, president and chief ex-
ecutive officer. “There have been tremendous strides
made in the treatment of cancer in the last 20 to 25
years, with the advent of targeted therapies, biologic
therapies, antibody therapies. But they’re not perfect.
“And there tend to be gaps in the continuum of care.”
HEALTHCARE
