SOURCE: Limerick BioPharma

September 29, 2008 08:00 ET

Limerick NeuroSciences Announces Name Change to Limerick BioPharma

Company Introduces New Website

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwire - September 29, 2008) - Limerick NeuroSciences, Inc., a privately held biopharmaceutical company, today announced its name change to Limerick BioPharma. Limerick has identified a proprietary means of improving existing therapeutics by chemically modulating bioavailability and is applying this technology to the development of safer and more potent pharmaceuticals. The company also introduced changes to its website, which presents current information about Limerick BioPharma and provides an overview of its proprietary Efflux Pump Activators. The new website can be found at http://www.limerickbio.com.

"We have made excellent progress transforming Limerick NeuroSciences from an early-stage life sciences company -- focused on applying our technology to improve CNS drugs by bypassing harmful brain exposure -- into Limerick BioPharma, a biopharmaceutical company with product candidates with therapeutic potential beyond the brain," stated Wendye R. Robbins, M.D., President and Chief Executive Officer. "Our new name, Limerick BioPharma, more accurately reflects the broad range of therapeutic drug classes we are targeting including immunosuppressants, opioids, immunomodulators, selective estrogens receptor modulators, and psychotropics."

Maintaining Drug Effects, Minimizing Side Effects

Limerick BioPharma's proprietary platforms improve existing marketed and development therapeutics by chemically modulating bioavailability and preventing unwanted exposure at various vulnerable tissue and organ sites. Limerick's platforms work by altering a drug's distribution through the selective activation of efflux pumps at non-targeted organs. Most drugs traverse from the systemic circulatory system to many organs, including organs that are not the primary target. Excessive exposure of some of these drugs in non-desired tissues can lead to drug-induced organ toxicities. Limerick's Activators enhance the export of drugs away from selected non-targeted organs back into the blood. This type of drug redistribution protects the vulnerable organs from many drug toxicities.

Through its efficient discovery and development strategy implemented with leading academics and other collaborators, Limerick has created a clinical pipeline of proprietary Activators. These Activators have been successfully paired with drug ligands in preclinical and clinical trials to improve tissue distribution. The effects include enhanced pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties and reduced tissue-specific drug side effects. Limerick's lead compound is an NCE transport activator that has shown specific protection against kidney and islet cell toxicities when paired with a well known immunosuppressive. This compound will enter the clinic in early 2009.