CO Based Therapies Take Giant Leap

The merger gives rise to a unified portfolio of field dominating intellectual property on a novel class of drugs which holds the promise to treat a wide range of chronic and acute diseases.

Carbon monoxide has long been recognized by a growing number of preclinical drug researchers to have exceptional therapeutic potential. However, utilizing a gas that is better known for its toxic properties (in overdose concentrations) than for its usefulness in human health had proved a practical challenge – until recently.
About seven years ago, two groups of researchers made near simultaneous discoveries that may catapult CO based therapies from the limited domain of a hospital administered medical gas into the mainstream of medicine. Scientists at hemoCORM, based at London’s Northwick Park Institute for Medical Research, and Alfama, a Lisbon and Boston based startup, invented a technology that makes it possible to deliver CO in drugs that can be administered orally, topically or by injection.

Today, on the seventh anniversary of one of those key discoveries, Alfama and hemoCORM announce their merger, bringing together the top scientists in the world of CO based therapy, and creating a single unified portfolio of compounds, preclinical data, and patents that now dominates the emerging field.
The new company, known as Alfama, Inc., controls a portfolio of several hundred proprietary compounds suitable for delivery of CO at different rates, quantities and with disease or tissue specific release properties. Among the company’s current priorities are pre - clinical programs on acute liver failure and multiple sclerosis. In its gaseous form, CO is undergoing clinical trials for kidney transplant and for pulmonary inflammation.

According to Nuno Arantes Oliveira, President and CEO of the company, “Strategically we will continue to take a portfolio based approach, through which we join forces with multiple partners to develop different families of CORMs for various indications in parallel, while keeping a few selected programs for internal development; from that standpoint, owning all the IP and working with all the key scientists in the field is a very major asset that this merger brings to Alfama“. ”Success for a small biotech company in today’s competitive climate is based on the ability to combine excellence in all key areas. Bringing
together hemoCORM and Alfama creates exactly that synergy between first class science and IP, operational and business capabilities, and robust international financing”, added Dr Philip Ledger, hemoCORM’s CEO.

Alfama has attracted investors from New York, Boston, San Francisco, London, Madrid and Lisbon, and the attention of Pharma partners worldwide. The company’s scientific founders include the biologists Roberto Motterlini, the scientific pioneer who coined the term CORM to describe the new class of drugs, and Werner Haas, former research leader at Hoffmann La Roche, as well as Brian Mann, of Sheffield University and Carlos Romão of the Institute for Chemical and Biological Technology of the New University of Lisbon (Portugal) – the chemists who made practical the theory behind CORMs.

“The world of the life sciences now has a new global leader in the exciting new therapeutic field of CORMs, ready to take on the challenge of bringing that science to patients in a genuine innovative way”, concluded Bernard C. Brigonnet, a pharma and biotech consultant who was instrumental in securing the merger.

CONTACTS:
EUROPE
351 21 4240001
Ágnes Lopes: alopes@alfama.com.pt
info@alfama.com.pt
UNITED STATES
1 617 5981111
info@alfamaUSA.com
Web sites:
www.alfama.com.pt
www.alfamaUSA.com
www.hemocorm.com