Panacea Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Awarded SBIR Grant for Parkinson's Disease Drug Development

ROCKVILLE, Md.--(BW HealthWire)--July 25, 2001--Panacea Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced today that the National Institute of Aging of the National Institutes of Health has awarded the Company a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant.

The grant, entitled, "Alpha-Synuclein: A Drug Target for Parkinson's Disease," will support the Company's research and development activities aimed at developing therapeutic drugs for Parkinson's disease (PD).

Dr. Hossein A. Ghanbari, President and CEO of Panacea, said, "We are extremely gratified to receive this NIH grant for our Parkinson's disease technology. It is an indication of the potential our proprietary technology has for the discovery and development of therapeutic drugs aimed at the fundamental disease process of Lewy body disorders."

The goal of the funded study is to develop pharmaceuticals that can inhibit alpha-synuclein oligomerization and thus Lewy body formation and neurodegeneration. Company scientists will verify the feasibility of using alpha-synuclein oligomerization inhibitors in a cell culture model of Lewy body formation.

The study complements the Company's ongoing collaboration with researchers at Loyola University Medical Center, led by Benjamin Wolozin, M.D., Ph.D. The Company has a License Agreement granting exclusive worldwide rights to the technology, and has also established a Collaborative Research agreement with Loyola for its further development.

Background on Alpha-Synuclein (A-Syn)

The discovery of the A-Syn gene has opened exciting new opportunities to explore the pathophysiology of PD and other Lewy body diseases. Lewy bodies are neuronal inclusions that are the neuropathologic hallmark of PD.

A-Syn is present in Lewy bodies in PD and diffuse Lewy body disease. In addition, mutations in A-Syn cause rare cases of familial PD, which demonstrates that changes in A-Syn biology are sufficient to drive the pathophysiology of PD.

The striking accumulation of A-Syn inclusions in Lewy body diseases indicates that A-Syn also plays an important role in the pathophysiology of these diseases. Nevertheless, the cause of A-Syn aggregation and the role of this aggregation in causing neurodegeneration and dementia, including that seen in Alzheimer's disease, has to date been unidentified.

The Company and its collaborators have identified the conditions whereby A-Syn aggregation occurs, and, based on these findings, have developed proprietary models for use in the discovery of A-Syn aggregation inhibitors. These models have already been employed to identify PAN-408 and PAN-527, the Company's two pre-clinical candidates for the treatment of PD.

Parkinson's Disease is the most common motor disorder, affecting 1% of the population over 60 years of age. Among individuals older than 70 years, 1.5-2.5% have the disease. In the United States alone, 50,000 people are diagnosed with PD each year, and more than half a million are affected at any one time. With the increasing age of the world population, a substantial increase in PD is anticipated.

About Panacea Pharmaceuticals

Panacea Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a development stage biopharmaceutical company focused on utilizing functional genomics and proteomics to develop therapeutics and diagnostics for cancer. The Company's technology pipeline includes drug development programs for central nervous system diseases, particularly Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.