Intellect Neurosciences Receives Notice of Allowance from United States Patent and Trademark Office for its ANTISENILIN® Alzheimer's Disease Immunotherapy Technology Platform

NEW YORK, March 6, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Intellect Neurosciences, Inc. (OTCBB: ILNS), 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.

Safe Harbor Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

The statements in this release and oral statements made by representatives of Intellect relating to matters that are not historical facts (including, without limitation, those regarding future performance or financial results, the timing or potential outcomes of research collaborations or clinical trials, any market that might develop for any of Intellect's product candidates and the sufficiency of Intellect's cash and other capital resources) are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, the likelihood that actual performance or results could materially differ, that future research will prove successful, the likelihood that any product in the research pipeline will receive regulatory approval in the United States or abroad, or Intellect's ability to fund such efforts with or without partners. Intellect undertakes no obligation to update any of these statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as to the date hereof. Accordingly, any forward-looking statements should be read in conjunction with the additional risks and uncertainties detailed in Intellect's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including those factors discussed under the caption "Risk Factors" in Intellect's Annual Report on Form 10-K (file no. 333-128226), filed on October 13, 2011, and in our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarterly period ended December 31, 2011, filed on February 2, 2012. 

Contact: 
Jules Abraham
JQA Partners, LLC
917-885-7378
jabraham@jqapartners.com

SOURCE Intellect Neurosciences, Inc.

Data & News supplied by www.cloudquote.io
Stock quotes supplied by Barchart
Quotes delayed at least 20 minutes.
By accessing this page, you agree to the following
Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions.