Article Excerpt:
TWST: Would you start with a history and an overview of Manhattan Pharmaceuticals?Mr. Abel: Manhattan Pharmaceuticals is a micro-cap pharmaceutical development company with three clinical stage product candidates. The company was founded in 2002 to develop oral Oleoyl-estrone (or OE) for the treatment of obesity. The product had been in-licensed from Oleoyl- estrone Developments, a small tech-transfer company associated with the University of Barcelona, where the early OE development work had been done. In 2003, Manhattan went public through a reverse merger with Atlantic Technology Ventures, and Manhattan Pharmaceuticals remained as the entity to continue the development of OE for obesity. Soon after, the company did its first financing transaction and brought in a second product, propofol lingual spray for pre-procedural sedation. In early 2005, Manhattan Pharmaceuticals acquired Tarpan Therapeutics in a merger transaction. Tarpan was a privately held company focused on developing a novel, topical formulation of parathyroid hormone 1-34 (or PTH1-34) for the treatment of psoriasis. As a result of that merger, Manhattan was able to add a third product to the pipeline, and I was brought in as CEO. Since January 2005 the company has made significant progress with the clinical programs, and especially with OE. Last year we completed both Phase Ia and Ib clinical studies and now we have just announced dosing of the first patient group in our Phase IIa study being conducted in Switzerland. So the advancement of OE from a pre-clinical product, through acceptance of the IND, and now into a Phase IIa trial in such a short amount of time is very exciting. It's certainly a great accomplishment and milestone for us. We did announce a delay earlier this year with dosing in our planned, physician IND-conducted, Phase IIa trial for PTH (1-34) for psoriasis. We identified some challenges with our formulation and announced a one to two quarter formulation effort to address that issue. That work is underway as we speak.
Tickers included in this excerpt: MHA
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