Spexis announces extension of moratorium, receipt of an additional payment related to the sale of a preclinical antibiotics program and reversion of the lonodelestat license from Santhera - Seite 2

Finally, Spexis announces that Santhera Pharmaceuticals Holding AG (Pratteln, Switzerland) has terminated the February 2018 agreement wherein Spexis (formerly Polyphor) out-licensed worldwide rights of lonodelestat, its novel, inhaled neutrophil elastase inhibitor, to Santhera.  Importantly, the decision to terminate the license was taken in light of Santhera’s portfolio prioritization, and not as a result of any safety or efficacy data having arisen from the Phase 1a or Phase 1b studies undertaken on lonodelestat during the term of the license.  All rights to lonodelestat and all data generated by Santhera on lonodelestat during the term of the license shall revert to Spexis during a brief transition period. 

Jeff Wager, MD, Chairman & CEO of Spexis, said: “These three events represent significant progress in the implementation of Spexis' moratorium plan, and we continue to pursue the goal of ultimately emerging from moratorium status.  In addition, the reversion of lonodelestat rights to Spexis also strengthens one of our core rare disease aereas – that of niche respiratory conditions – wherein Spexis already has significant assets and experience.  We thank Santhera for the progress they made with lonodelestat as a licensee, and based upon this progress, we plan to announce further, innovative development plans as soon as practicable.  We continue to have great confidence in the novelty of our macrocycle technology as a drug discovery platform to ultimately address significant unmet medical needs in rare disease and oncology.”

About Spexis

Spexis (SIX: SPEX) is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company based in Allschwil, Switzerland, focused on macrocycle therapeutics for rare diseases and oncology. For further information please visit: www.spexisbio.com.

About Spexis’ Macrocycle Platforms

Spexis possesses what we regard as some of the most distinct, highly diverse and very well characterized macrocycle libraries in the world, together with deep data on same, developed over the course of more than 25 years of research and development and significant investment.  These include PEMFinder, which is comprised of peptidomimetic macrocycles, and MACROFinder, which are small molecule macrocycles.  Each have distinct applications depending on the targets in question, which can be both extracelluar and intracellular targets.  In addition to generating the specific OMPTA candidates described in this press release, these platforms have generated multiple other drug candidates in the Spexis pipeline, including murepavidin, balixafortide, lonodelestat and others.