Last checked at 11 Nov 2008 15:02
| Press Release | 11 November 2008 |
e-Therapeutics plc
("e-Therapeutics" or "the Company")
Patents granted for discovery technology in Europe, UK and India
Other territories expected to follow
e-Therapeutics plc (AIM: ETX), the drug discovery and development company, is pleased to announce that it has been granted patent protection for its in silico drug discovery technology in Europe, the UK and India. The Company has also applied for protection in other territories, including the USA, and approvals are expected to follow shortly.
Drugs typically cause their medical benefits and side effects by interacting with proteins in the body's cells. The Company's proprietary in silico technology has been shown to predict how compounds will react with proteins both in cells related to a particular disease and in normal cells. This optimises the drug discovery process by identifying drugs that interact with specific proteins, to produce the desired therapeutic response with minimal side effects. e-Therapeutics' discovery processes enable the Company and its partners to de-risk investment decisions before committing substantial sums required to develop a new drug in clinical trials.
Professor Malcolm Young, e-Therapeutics' CEO, said: "The granting of these patents for our discovery processes is a key milestone for the Company and effectively closes the door on the competition. Our successes in the clinic demonstrate the potential of our technology to discover safe and effective drugs, particularly in areas of medicine in which conventional strategies for biopharmaceutical drug development have often failed. "
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For further information:
| e-Therapeutics plc | www.etherapeutics.co.uk |
| Malcolm Young malcolm@etherapeutics.co.uk | +44 (0) 191 233 1317 |
| Nominated Advisor: WH Ireland | |
| Katy Mitchell katy.mitchell@wh-ireland.co.uk | +44 (0)113 394 6628 |
| Broker: Cornhill Asset Management | |
| Simon Legge legge@cornhillcapital.com | +44 (0) 20 7337 1215 |
| Abchurch | www.abchurch-group.com |
| Heather Salmond/Stephanie Cuthbert/Simone Alves stephanie.cuthbert@abchurch-group.com | +44 (0) 20 7398 7704 |
Notes to Editors
e-Therapeutics plc is a drug discovery and development company. It has developed proprietary computational systems to swiftly and accurately analyse and predict how medicines interact with cells in the body. This optimises the probability of identifying drug candidates with desirable efficacy and low toxicity. The Company applies its novel, systematic approach to three areas of activity:
| discovery of new drugs; | |
| discovering novel uses for existing drugs; and | |
| analysis of the interactions between different drugs. |
Amongst e-Therapeutics' pipeline of compounds in development are novel antibiotics that have been shown to kill the "superbug" MRSA, and a novel cancer chemotherapy that has been shown to kill malignant cells at safe doses in a very short time. Other candidate therapies in development are targeted at atherosclerosis, asthma and depression. The Company is currently in negotiation with a number of pharmaceutical companies, and is progressing the preclinical and clinical development of these products.
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