Puffer fish or cold turkey.

    Author: Gray, John.

Source: Canadian Business v. 74 no7 (Apr. 16 2001)

    The puffer fish, or fugu, has long tempted Japanese gourmands looking for a little taste of adventure. Diners pay up to US$110 a plate, not just to sample the raw delicacy, but for a chance to cheat death. Puffer fish, which swell to twice their normal size when threatened, produce a poison so lethal that the US Food and Drug Administration warns it can lead to "rapid and violent death." Japanese sushi chefs must be specially trained and licensed to handle the deadly dish, but the delicacy still kills a handful of brave--or foolhardy--diners each year.

    Frank Shum, an engineer who came to Canada from Hong Kong in 1988, understands why connoisseurs are willing to risk their lives for a bite of the fugu. "It's very tasty," he says. "After you've had puffer fish, you don't want anything else." But it's not the taste that has the president of Vancouver-based International Wex Technologies Inc. (CDNX: WXI) so excited--it's the potential use of puffer poison, excreted from the fish's liver, ovaries and intestines, as an aid in the cure of heroin addiction. IWT has used that poison, tetrodotoxin, to develop a drug called Tetrodin at its research facility in Nanning, China. First-stage clinical trials are underway at Ventana Clinical Research in Toronto.

    Tetrodotoxin prevents the transmission of nerve impulses by blocking sodium from moving through nerve membranes. Victims hit with a dose go numb at first; then paralysis sets in. They're dead within six to 24 hours. But thanks to research developed at the Beijing Medical University in 1986, IWT discovered that tiny doses of the drug act as a powerful painkiller. The company set out to develop Tetrodin, which blocks the unbearable pain that wracks addicts going through heroin withdrawal--quite possibly the biggest reason kicking the drug is so difficult. Methadone, the most common heroin addiction treatment, also keeps withdrawal pains at bay and blocks the euphoric high created by heroin to boot. But many users end up becoming addicted to methadone. Tetrodin, on the other hand, isn't addictive. And according to Donna Shum, IWT's chief operating officer and Frank's daughter, many test subjects throughout China (one of the world's biggest heroin markets, along with Vancouver) successfully completed withdrawal treatment in two weeks using Tetrodin.

    IWT was originally created in 1985 to market a heart monitor built by Shum. But when he stumbled on the puffer fish theory, the company shelved its medical equipment business and opened a research facility in China close to the South China Sea, where the fugu is both fished and farmed. One fish produces an average of 660 doses of Tetrodin. Two weeks of treatment will cost about US$2,000, compared with other heroin addiction drugs like methadone, which cost between US$2,000 to US$6,000 a year, possibly for the rest of an addict's life.

    But before IWT starts setting prices, it first has to prove it can deliver the goods. Initial results are encouraging, says Robert Peets, an analyst with Vancouver-based Golden Capital Securities. "But the future of the company will be determined over the next 12 months," he says. "If Tetrodin does not gain approval in China, and especially in North America, then the entire future of the company is in peril." IWT has a backup plan, though: it's currently developing two drugs it hopes to market as non-addictive painkillers to compete with opium-based drugs such as morphine and Demerol.

    Right now, IWT is burning through about $260,000 a month on trials and has enough cash--about $2 million--to last until the final stage of Phase 1 clinical trials. (Its stock is currently trading at about $1.84, down from a high of $4.60 in March 2000, and Shum is planning another round of private placement financing in April.) It has already completed tests on animals and some humans in China, and North American clinical trials should be completed by the end of 2002. But IWT will still have to hunt around for a major pharmaceutical company to bring Tetrodin through to its final--and most expensive--trial, and eventually to market.

    In the meantime, investors and addicts alike will be waiting to see if IWT's tests prove Tetrodin can really help kick heroin. That alone will determine whether IWT's bottom line puffs up or whether the company becomes yet another victim of the fugu's deadly poison.

Back to EASE Articles Index