Melior Pharmaceuticals Announces Execution of License Agreement for Armesocarb by Adhera Therapeutics
July 29, 2021 at 08:00 am EDT
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Melior Pharmaceuticals (Melior) announced that it completed a definitive licensing agreement with Adhera Therapeutics, Inc. for Melior’s Parkinson’s disease (PD) candidate, MLR-1019 (armesocarb). As with all of Melior’s drug candidates, MLR-1019 is a repositioned drug that has demonstrated safety and tolerability in previous clinical studies. Melior has uncovered a previously unreported therapeutic potential of MLR-1019 in PD. As such it represents a new class of PD therapeutic which may be the only drug candidate to address both movement and non-movement aspects of PD. Based upon Melior’s thorough understanding of the drug’s mechanism, an accumulation of a substantial amount of PD animal model data, as well as anecdotes from previous clinical use of the drug, Melior has built confidence in the drug’s utility in benefiting multiple aspects of PD. Under the terms of the license Adhera is underwriting the cost of further MLR-1019 development. Further, upon attaining certain milestones, Adhera will have an option to fully acquire all intellectual property associated with MLR-1019.
Adhera Therapeutics, Inc. is a specialty biotech company. The Company is focused on the drug development and commercialization of small molecule drugs to treat Parkinson's disease (PD) and Type 1 diabetes. The Company's advanced development programs are MLR-1019, a small molecule drug candidate being developed for PD, and MLR-1023, being developed to treat Type 1 diabetes. MLR-1019 is a highly selective dopamine re-uptake inhibitor for treating the dyskinesias associated with chronic dopamine precursor levodopa (L-DOPA) treatment in PD patients. MLR-1019 is a highly selective dopamine reuptake transporter (DAT) inhibitor used for the treatment of type 1 diabetes, non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, and pulmonary inflammation. It utilizes a virtual drug development model, where contract research organizations (CROs) are employed to undertake certain drug discovery and development services on the Companyâs behalf and under its direct supervision.