Aussie biotech pioneer tackling ‘silver tsunami’ of age-related disease

Filamon is developing next generation anti-inflammatory drugs specifically designed for age-related diseases
Company was co-founded by Dr Graham Kelly, who is a pioneer of Australian biotech and serial entrepreneur
Filamon targeting three main age-related disease areas including cancer, eye disease and dementia

An Australian biotech co-founded by a local pioneer in the sector and planning an IPO within FY25 is positioning itself to play a major role in addressing the “silver tsunami” of age-related diseases.

Filamon is developing next generation anti-inflammatory drugs specifically designed for age-related chronic inflammatory diseases such as cancer, dementia and degenerative eye conditions like macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathies.

The drugs are the product of ground-breaking Australian university research for which more than A$50m has already been invested on their development to date.

Filamon CEO and chairman Dr Graham Kelly. Pic: Provided

Filamon was co-founded by CEO and chairman Dr Graham Kelly – a pioneer of Australian biotech and serial entrepreneur – who believes his latest company brings together his life’s work spanning more than 50 years.

“I’ve been involved in medical research for a long time and you develop a nose about what is potentially groundbreaking or going to make it and this is what I have been working for all my life,” Kelly told Stockhead.

Alongside Kelly, Filamon co-founders include executive director Professor Paul de Souza, professor of medicine (oncology) at the Nepean Clinical School of the University of Sydney and Kieran Scott, Associate Professor, oncology at Western Sydney University. Scott is chair of the Filamon scientific advisory board.

Kelly’s journey in drug development began in the 1970s with his PhD at The University of Sydney’s Faculty of Medicine, where he developed a novel drug to treat tissue rejection in kidney transplants that went on to be used in thousands of transplant patients.

He has founded four drug development companies, all of which are still operational and listed on the ASX and NASDAQ.

Kelly and de Souza’s collaboration dates back to 1999 when de Souza conducted a Phase 1 study on Kelly’s first anti-cancer drug. Over the years, they’ve continued to work together.

“This to me looks like the opportunity to do something very significant and we’re talking about the major diseases that kill the majority of people in the developed world and are responsible for most of the hospitalisations,” Kelly says.

“Dementia for example has taken over from heart disease and cancer as the major killer of elderly Australian women, something that comes as a surprise to most people.

“It is predicted that dementia will become the major cause of death of older Australian men in 10 years’ time.”

Pipeline of three drug tech platforms

Filamon has a pipeline of three drug technology platforms designed to block a series of “master switches” responsible for chronic inflammatory disease processes.

“The three technologies are totally novel and are doing things which others have so far been unable to do,” Kelly says.

“We are able to target these master switches which previously have been seen as undruggable because their importance means if you switch them off you get too many damaging side effects.

“But each of our technologies has found a way of switching these master switches off without causing side effects pre-clinically which has me excited and is what distinguishes Filamon from any other company I know about.”

Potential to transform wet AMD treatment

Kelly says the drug platforms have been under development in Australian universities for up to 15 years, with all three having a series of provisional patent applications designed to protect this valuable IP.

He says the LK-BT2 (blindness program) was considered of such significant national value it garnered a ~$4.9m grant from the Federal Government and UNSW.

“Currently, the treatment for wet age-related macular degeneration (wet AMD) is a drug injected directly into the eyeball monthly for the rest of your life, which unfortunately doesn’t work in 1 in 3 patients and only slows down the disease where it does work,” he says.

“Our drug, being developed with the help of eminent scientists at the University of New South Wales, is designed to be given by eye dropper so patients do not have to see an ophthalmologist monthly and have the pain and discomfort of an eyeball injection.

“The Federal Government agreed that this drug has the potential to save the Commonwealth billions of dollars in caring for elderly people with vision loss, and we are working as quickly as possible to bring this drug into the clinic.”

Rise of the ‘silver tsunami’

Kelly says the “silver tsunami” or “grey wave” has arrived and with it a dramatic rise in the need for medicines to treat diseases of ageing worldwide.

The World Health Organisation projects that by 2030, one in six people worldwide will be aged 60 or older, totalling 1.4 billion people. This number is expected to rise to 2.1 billion by 2050, underscoring the expanding market and challenge.

“Health economists are justifiably concerned about the so-called ‘silver tsunami’, because the world is seriously under-prepared for the health consequences and their cost,” Kelly says.

“The US, for example, is predicting that the cost of caring for dementia patients there in 2050 will be US$1.1 trillion in today’s money.

“What is needed is drugs that do more than just slow down disease progression and which are cost-effective, which is what we believe the Filamon drugs offer.”

Multi-gene complexity

Kelly says most age-related diseases stem from chronic inflammation in response to lifelong ‘wear and tear.’

“Chronic inflammatory disease builds up over years. It’s not like the inflammation you get from a skin cut which simple anti-inflammatory drugs like aspirin might relieve,” he says.

“We are talking about highly complex diseases involving hundreds of genes that current anti-inflammatory drugs are struggling to treat because they are designed for less complicated forms of inflammation.

“If they worked, then we wouldn’t have so much chronic inflammatory disease like heart disease, cancer or dementia.”

Kelly says Filamon drugs have been designed to treat the complexity by targeting master switches that control hundreds of genes.

“Where other companies see specific diseases, we see chronic inflammation which underlies most of our age-related diseases,” he says.

“By having focused up to now on technology platforms that we believe will safely target these master switches, we have put ourselves in a position now to select those targets where we believe we can make the most difference, and that is cancer, degenerative eye diseases and dementia.

“Any one of those targets is worth tens of billions of dollars. Together, they are looming as the largest drug market in the world.”

Kelly says he has confidence in the prospects of Filamon, which is currently undertaking a Pre-IPO funding round, aiming to raise up to A$5m. Sequoia Financial Group and Techvoyage are involved in the current raise.

At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While Filamon is a Stockhead advertiser, the company did not sponsor this article.