Rib-X Pharmaceuticals Renews Collaborative Agreement with the Medical Research Council
New Haven, Connecticut and London, U.K. April 14, 2008 — Rib-X Pharmaceuticals, Inc.,
a development stage company focused on the discovery and development of novel antibiotics for
the treatment of antibiotic resistant infections, and the Laboratory of Molecular Biology
of the Medical Research Council (MRC) today announced they have renewed their research
collaboration agreement in the area of ribosome and antibiotic structure and function for
an additional year. Under the terms of the Agreement, Rib-X and the MRC will continue to
jointly explore the high resolution crystal structure of the 70S ribosome.
"Using information discovered about the ribosome during our first year of work with the MRC, Rib-X has been able to advance the iterative intelligent discovery engine that the Company developed to design novel antibiotic scaffolds which circumvent the mechanisms employed by resistant bacteria," said Erin Duffy, Ph.D., Rib-X's Vice President of Structure Based Drug Design. "This is a natural extension of our relationship with MRC, which will build upon Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan's discovery of the structure of the full 70S ribosome and, in turn, increase our understanding, on an atomic level, of the binding properties of antibiotics to the 50S subunit of the ribosome."
About Rib-X Pharmaceuticals
Rib-X Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a product driven small molecule drug discovery and development company focused on the structure based design of new classes of antibiotics. The Company's underlying drug discovery engine capitalizes on its proprietary high-resolution crystal structure of the ribosome, which performs an essential role in the fundamental process of protein synthesis. Many known, commercially valuable antibiotics bind to the ribosome, including those used to treat both community acquired and hospital acquired pathogens. The Company's integrated research strategy, which combines state-of-the-art, proprietary computational analysis, X-ray crystallography, medicinal chemistry, microbiology, and biochemistry, allows it to rapidly synthesize new agents designed to avoid typical antibiotic resistance mechanisms. Rib-X's iterative intelligent engine has yielded several distinctive new antibiotic classes. The Company currently has two programs in human clinical trials, the radezolid (RX-1741) designer oxazolidinone program as an oral/IV agent to treat serious hospital Gram-positive infections and the delafloxacin, (RX-3341) program, a next generation fluoroquinolone, active against a broad spectrum of bacteria, including methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Additionally, the Company has multiple drug discovery programs. The first of these is an exciting discovery program that is well on its way toward the identification of new chemical classes of antibiotics active against multi-drug resistant Gram-negative bacteria in the hospital. The second of these programs is focused on design and development of an IV and orally active macrolide for treatment of infections in the nursing home and hospital setting, including those caused by MRSA and enterococci. Radezolid and the multiple discovery programs derive from Rib-X's proprietary use of the ribosome structure and computational tools.
"Using information discovered about the ribosome during our first year of work with the MRC, Rib-X has been able to advance the iterative intelligent discovery engine that the Company developed to design novel antibiotic scaffolds which circumvent the mechanisms employed by resistant bacteria," said Erin Duffy, Ph.D., Rib-X's Vice President of Structure Based Drug Design. "This is a natural extension of our relationship with MRC, which will build upon Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan's discovery of the structure of the full 70S ribosome and, in turn, increase our understanding, on an atomic level, of the binding properties of antibiotics to the 50S subunit of the ribosome."
About Rib-X Pharmaceuticals
Rib-X Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a product driven small molecule drug discovery and development company focused on the structure based design of new classes of antibiotics. The Company's underlying drug discovery engine capitalizes on its proprietary high-resolution crystal structure of the ribosome, which performs an essential role in the fundamental process of protein synthesis. Many known, commercially valuable antibiotics bind to the ribosome, including those used to treat both community acquired and hospital acquired pathogens. The Company's integrated research strategy, which combines state-of-the-art, proprietary computational analysis, X-ray crystallography, medicinal chemistry, microbiology, and biochemistry, allows it to rapidly synthesize new agents designed to avoid typical antibiotic resistance mechanisms. Rib-X's iterative intelligent engine has yielded several distinctive new antibiotic classes. The Company currently has two programs in human clinical trials, the radezolid (RX-1741) designer oxazolidinone program as an oral/IV agent to treat serious hospital Gram-positive infections and the delafloxacin, (RX-3341) program, a next generation fluoroquinolone, active against a broad spectrum of bacteria, including methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Additionally, the Company has multiple drug discovery programs. The first of these is an exciting discovery program that is well on its way toward the identification of new chemical classes of antibiotics active against multi-drug resistant Gram-negative bacteria in the hospital. The second of these programs is focused on design and development of an IV and orally active macrolide for treatment of infections in the nursing home and hospital setting, including those caused by MRSA and enterococci. Radezolid and the multiple discovery programs derive from Rib-X's proprietary use of the ribosome structure and computational tools.
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Gina Nugent
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