Algernon Pharmaceuticals Appoints Professor of Respiratory Medicine Dr. Jacky Smith to Its Medical and Scientific Advisory Board

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Feb. 07, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Algernon Pharmaceuticals Inc. (CSE: AGN) (FRANKFURT: AGW) (OTCQB: AGNPF) (the “Company” or “Algernon”), a clinical stage pharmaceutical development company, is pleased to announce that Dr. Jacky Smith, Professor of Respiratory Medicine and a leading global scientific expert and clinician in the area of understanding the mechanisms underlying cough in respiratory diseases and the testing of novel anti-tussive therapies, has joined the Algernon Medical and Scientific Advisory Board.

Jacky Smith is a Professor of Respiratory Medicine at the University of Manchester and an Honorary Consultant at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust. She runs a multi-disciplinary research team whose focus is on understanding mechanisms underlying pathological cough and a regional clinical service seeing patients with refractory chronic cough. She is also the Director of the NIHR Manchester Clinical Research Facility and Leads the Rapid Translational Incubator Theme of the NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre.

In collaboration with Mr. Kevin McGuinness (clinical engineer), she has developed a novel method for semi-automated cough detection that has been licensed to a medical device company (Vitalograph Ltd) with whom she collaborates. The subsequent commercialization of this cough monitoring system has changed the standards by which novel cough therapies are evaluated in regulatory clinical trials. Moreover, the use of this system to quantify coughing in a study of patients attending her chronic cough clinic facilitated the discovery of a new class of efficacious anti-tussive therapy, P2X3 antagonists.

Algernon has chosen Vitalograph to supply and service the cough monitors and to analyze the data for its upcoming idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (“IPF”) and chronic cough phase 2 trial.

“I am very pleased to join the Algernon Medical and Scientific advisory board,” said Jacky Smith, MB, ChB, FRCP, PhD. “I had investigated a similar mechanism to Algernon’s NP-120 (Ifenprodil) compound a number of years ago and we definitely saw a signal in that study. I am hopeful the NP-120 phase 2 study will be a success which could pave the way for a new treatment options for both IPF and chronic cough patients in the future.”

About Algernon Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Algernon Pharmaceuticals is a clinical stage pharmaceutical development company focused on advancing its lead compounds for non–alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), chronic kidney disease (CKD) inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) and chronic cough.