Intellect Neurosciences, Inc. (ILNS) - Holy grail of Alzheimer's treatment -
Intellect Neurosciences Receives Notice of Allowance from United States Patent and Trademark Office for its ANTISENILIN® Alzheimer's Disease Immunotherapy Technology Platform
USPTO allows claims directed to methods of treating Alzheimer's disease using therapeutic antibodies that recognize the free C-terminus of Beta Amyloid 1-40
NEW YORK, March 6, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Intellect Neurosciences, Inc. (OTCBB: ILNS.PK - News), a biopharmaceutical company engaged in the discovery and development of disease-modifying therapeutic agents for the treatment of Alzheimer's and other neurological diseases announced today that it received a Notice of Allowance from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for patent claims covering the company's ANTISENILIN® monoclonal antibody platform technology for the treatment and prevention of Alzheimer's disease.
A Notice of Allowance is a written communication from the USPTO stating its intention to grant a U.S. patent, after payment of the Government Issue fee. Upon grant of the patent, Intellect Neurosciences will request a $2 million milestone payment from a top tier global pharmaceutical company based on its licensing agreement with the company.
"The fact that Intellect overcame an exceptionally high threshold for allowance set by the USPTO illustrates the strength of our patent, the significance of the underlying invention, and rewards our relentless efforts to obtain a patent of meaningful commercial value on behalf of the company and our shareholders," said Daniel G. Chain, PhD, Intellect Neurosciences chairman & CEO and inventor of the ANTISENILIN technology. "The decision by the USPTO to grant this patent is long overdue. We remain confident that we will obtain allowance of additional claims in the future for the other components of the ANTISENILIN platform."
The allowed patent application discloses therapeutic antibodies to treat Alzheimer's disease. The antibodies specifically bind to the ends of the beta amyloid protein without binding to the amyloid precursor protein (APP), which has important safety advantages compared to antibodies that do not have this feature. Based on recent submissions by Intellect, the USPTO allowed patent claims directed to treatment methods that use antibodies that recognize the free C-terminus of beta amyloid 1-40. Intellect has additional patent applications pending in the United States and in other countries relating to its antibody technology.
The best-known example of a therapeutic antibody that binds to the free C-terminus of beta amyloid 1-40 is ponezumab (aka PF-04360365). A phase 1 study to determine effect of PF-04360365 on clearance of beta amyloid from cerebrospinal fluid in patients with Alzheimer's disease and healthy volunteers is currently recruiting patients according to www.ClinicalTrials.gov and verified by Pfizer in February 2012. This trial, which is scheduled to complete in August 2012, follows other completed Phase 1 and 2 trials.
"It is important that the USPTO has finally acknowledged Dr. Chain's seminal discovery in 1997 that laid the foundations for Alzheimer's passive immunotherapy treatments targeting soluble beta amyloid which accumulates in the brain of Alzheimer's patients, leading to neurodegeneration," said Professor Kelvin Davies, Chairman of the Company's Scientific Advisory Board and the James E. Birren Chair in Gerontology at the University of Southern California. "Dr. Chain's approach has already been adopted by several major pharmaceutical companies with promising clinical data."
About Intellect Neurosciences, Inc. Intellect Neurosciences, Inc. develops innovative approaches aimed at arresting or preventing Alzheimer's disease, and other neurodegenerative diseases, focusing especially on proteinopathies. Intellect's pipeline includes therapeutic vaccines, antibodies and neuroprotective antibody drug conjugates.
The company is currently developing products based on three platform technologies: ANTISENILIN® is Intellect's Alzheimer's beta amyloid monoclonal antibody platform technology which underlies a product in Phase 3 clinical trials licensed to major pharmaceutical companies. ANTISENILIN also underlies IN-N01, a humanized monoclonal antibody being developed by the company. RECALL-VAX™ is a therapeutic vaccine technology that underlies three preclinical drug candidates, RV01, RV02, which target beta amyloid and delta tau protein, respectively, and RV03, which is a combination of the two. IN-N01-OX2 is the first candidate to emerge from the company's CONJUMAB-A™ platform technology, based on a completely novel application of antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) in which the antibody is chemically conjugated to a small molecule (OX2) that has potent neuroprotective properties both as an antioxidant and inhibitor of protein aggregation.
Intellect is seeking to partner/license its platform technologies on a product- by-product basis to develop antibody-drug conjugates and therapeutic vaccines. RECALL-VAX and CONJUMAB-A have potential applications for treatment of several serious diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's, Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy, Frontotemporal Dementia, Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, Pick's disease, Cortical Basal Degeneration, Age-Related Macular Degeneration, Glaucoma, and Peripheral Amyloidosis.
The company recently licensed OX1 a small molecule multimodal antioxidant to ViroPharma, Inc. for Friedreich's Ataxia and other neurodegenerative diseases. For more information, please visit www.intellectns.com
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