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Oligomerix Awarded $0.5 M phase I NIH SBIR Fast-Track Grant to Conduct Safety Studies that will Support Clinical Studies of OLX-07010 for Alzheimer’s Patients

via Business Wire

-- Company gains NIH Fast-Track award supporting long-term dosing in Alzheimer’s patients for planned Phase 1b studies to evaluate OLX-07010, a small molecule inhibitor of tau protein self-association--

Oligomerix, Inc., a privately held clinical stage company pioneering the development of oral, small molecule therapeutics targeting Alzheimer’s (AD) and rare neurodegenerative diseases, announced an NIH Fast Track award of $0.5 million from the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health. This grant supports clinical development of OLX-07010, its orally administered, investigational drug, targeting pathological tau aggregates that drive the progression of AD.

Long-term treatment for chronic diseases such as AD requires safe, effective, and economically feasible approaches for patients, currently about 7 million in the US alone. “This NIH SBIR Fast-Track award is an important component of our comprehensive development program for OLX-07010. The proposed nonclinical safety studies of OLX-07010 will provide the data needed to support the longer studies in AD patients needed to adequately explore the safety and efficacy of the compound. Subsequent planned clinical studies will continue to define the safety profile of the compound as well as its efficacy based on biomarkers and established measures of dementia,” said William Erhardt, M.D., Chief Medical Officer and Head of Development at Oligomerix.

“The prevalence of AD is increasing worldwide. While some new products have been FDA approved in recent years, they are all antibody treatments requiring infusions or injections targeting amyloid. There remains an urgent need for disease modifying drugs for AD that are cost-effective and easy to administer orally. OLX-07010 is progressing to fill this need with an economical, disease-modifying drug that is stable, and can be self-administered as a pill" said James Moe, Ph.D., MBA, President & CEO at Oligomerix. "Our goal is to ease some of the patient burden of AD by bringing a new, and potentially complementary, treatment option to the tens of millions of patients suffering from AD and other neurodegenerative diseases globally.”

This program has the potential to have a tremendous impact on the more than 7.2 million Americans who currently have AD (projected to be 13.8 million by 2060) and their caregivers. It holds the promise to help reduce the current cost of AD ($384 billion projected to be $1 trillion by 2050) to our nation (Alzheimer's Association 2025 Alzheimer's Disease Facts and Figures). The World Alzheimer Report projects there will be 288 million AD patients by 2050 driving an estimated cost of $2.8 trillion.

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number 1R44AG091987-01. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

About Oligomerix’s Lead Program

OLX-07010 is a highly differentiated experimental drug that is an oral, once-per-day medication that has demonstrated an ability to prevent the accumulation of tau protein in multiple transgenic animal models and is now progressing through Phase 1 human testing. Given the recent approvals of new treatments for AD, Oligomerix is excited for the potential of its small molecule inhibitor targeting tau accumulation and at the possibility of offering patients a new therapeutic option.

About Oligomerix, Inc.

Oligomerix is a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on discovering and developing novel, small-molecule inhibitors of proteins that accumulate in AD and rare neurodegenerative diseases such as progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) discovering inhibitors of protein self-association. The company’s headquarters and research laboratories are located at the Ullmann Research Center for Health Sciences within the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Oligomerix is seeking strategic partners and investors to support the acceleration and advancement of these important programs. For more information about Oligomerix, please visit our website at https://oligomerix.com/ and follow us on LinkedIn.

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