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Ore Pharmaceuticals Focuses Resources on Development of Repositioned Compounds
GAITHERSBURG, MD, USA | Jun 16, 2008 | Ore Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:ORXED) announced today a new alignment of corporate resources. Henceforward, the Company will invest its resources in clinical development and business development efforts for compounds repositioned over the past four years through the application of its proprietary indications discovery program. As part of this new alignment, Ore Pharmaceuticals has reassigned a portion of its discovery workforce to the Company's drug development team and will also reduce its remaining workforce related to indication discovery and administrative activities as it winds down its indication discovery activities. These changes are intended to concentrate the Company's resources on drug development and commercialization, activities it considers to hold the greatest potential to achieve gains in shareholder value.
Ore Pharmaceuticals Chief Executive Officer, Charles L. Dimmler, III, commented, "Our indications discovery program has achieved the goal established at its inception. We've succeeded in identifying new therapeutic applications for a number of compounds provided by our drug repositioning partners. We believe that these compounds may be reintroduced to the clinic at Phase II because their development path is enabled by the prior work completed by our pharmaceutical company partners. We now are actively engaged in negotiating to acquire development rights for several of the most promising of these compounds. We've taken the decision to focus our efforts and resources on developing clinical-stage candidates in our pipeline. For our lead compound, GL1001, we expect to file an Investigational New Drug application with the FDA at mid-year. We are currently seeking out-licensing or partnering arrangements for the advancement of GL1001. We plan to follow a similar development process with future compounds in our pipeline."
Ore Pharmaceutical's Development Pipeline
GL1001 is a first-in-class, orally administered small molecule that the Company is seeking to develop for the treatment of a number of gastrointestinal conditions, including ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, and gastritis. The Company has demonstrated favorable preclinical results in in vivo models and expects to initiate clinical trials for GL1001 in the fall of this year. Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis are conditions with high unmet medical need affecting more than 900,000 persons in the United States and an estimated additional population of 4,000,000 throughout the world.
Workforce Reduction
Central to its efforts to increase its focus on drug development, the Company has reassigned certain members of its discovery workforce to its drug development program. Ore Pharmaceuticals will reduce its workforce from the 71 employees it reported as of December 31, 2007 to approximately 22 by December 31, 2008. The Company expects to make future cash payments of approximately $1.0 million in connection with employment terminations resulting from this course of action. These payments will be made in the next three quarters.
"Our decision to reduce this workforce is particularly difficult because these employees have been integral to the successes that enabled us to implement this new alignment. I deeply appreciate all of the past contributions made to Ore Pharmaceuticals by these very talented and committed professionals," said Mr. Dimmler. "The actions announced today will enable Ore Pharmaceuticals to direct its resources with greater effect to the ongoing development of GL1001 and the remaining preclinical and subsequent clinical stage development of additional development candidates in the Company's pipeline. This decision reflects the future of the Company."
Ore Pharmaceuticals Overview
Ore Pharmaceuticals is a commercial drug development company. We have applied our proprietary know how in integrative pharmacology to identify potential new uses for drug candidates. We are now focused on developing certain compounds for which we have found such new uses. Our goal is to meet the demands of the pharmaceutical industry by supplying development stage drug compounds to enrich drug development pipelines. We currently have a lead compound, GL1001, in our own development pipeline for which we have identified potential new therapeutic uses to treat gastrointestinal inflammation, including inflammatory bowel disease (IBD, including ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease) and other conditions. GL1001 has shown indications of efficacy at relevant doses in in vivo testing for IBD. We intend to initiate clinical testing of GL1001 in 2008 while actively seeking to out-license or partner the further clinical development and commercialization of the compound. We have rights to develop additional compounds that have been tested in clinical stage testing by our partners but that are in later stages of preclinical testing for the uses we have discovered. Visit us at orepharma.com or call 1-877-ORE-PHRM.
SOURCE: Ore Pharmaceuticals
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