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Tranzyme
Pharma Receives Notice of Allowance from USPTO on Patent
Protecting Company’s Macrocyclic Chemistry Technology
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. and
SHERBROOKE, Québec (July 19, 2006) -Tranzyme Pharma, a leading
biopharmaceutical company developing novel mechanism-based
therapeutics for the treatment of gastrointestinal (GI) and
metabolic disorders, announced today that the Company has
received a Notice of Allowance from the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office (USPTO) for its patent application entitled
“Combinatorial Synthesis of Libraries of Macrocyclic Compounds.”
The patent protects key aspects of the Company’s core
drug-design platform, Macrocyclic Template Chemistry (MATCH™).
Tranzyme Pharma has successfully leveraged MATCH to build a
diverse library of small molecules that exhibit high potency and
selectivity against multiple types of pharmaceutically important
targets from which the Company has developed its pipeline of
first-in-class therapeutics.
“This Notice of Allowance represents a significant milestone for
the Company as it marks the first issued patent protecting our
MATCH™ technology,” stated Vipin K. Garg, Ph.D., President & CEO
for Tranzyme Pharma. “The issuance of this patent follows the
completion of a Phase I trial for our first clinical product,
TZP-101. We are very excited with the significant progress that
we have made in demonstrating the ability of our chemistry to
produce a pipeline of high-quality drug candidates for internal
development. Our strategy is to further leverage this technology
in joint drug discovery and development alliances across
multiple therapeutic areas.”
“We are pleased that the USPTO has recognized the unique aspects
of the technology and granted us this initial protection. This
is just the first of many patents we expect to have issued for
our chemistry platform and for our specific pharmaceutical
programs,” added Mark L. Peterson, Ph.D., Vice President of
Intellectual Property & Operations for Tranzyme Pharma.
MATCH™ is a proprietary drug design and medicinal chemistry
technology which exploits a distinct compound class, macrocyclic
small molecules. Tranzyme has developed the first and only
synthetic library of these macrocyclic small molecules. MATCH™
has proven to be a particularly rich source for novel drug
candidates since it maintains the favorable characteristics
exhibited by large biomolecules, such as tight receptor binding
for high potency and selectivity, while eliminating the
drawbacks typically associated with peptide and protein drugs,
i.e. poor metabolic stability, low oral bioavailability, lack of
membrane permeability, high manufacturing costs, and
antigenicity.
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