Polyphor wins the Swiss Technology Award 2018

Polyphor received the “Innovation Leader” prize during the 30^th Swiss Innovation Forum 2018 held on 22 November in Basel. Each year, outstanding technology-based innovations and developments from start-ups, universities, technical institutions and established businesses are awarded from the Swiss Innovation Forum in the categories Inventors, Start-ups and Innovation Leaders.

Polyphor has discovered, leveraging its macrocycle platform, a new class of antibiotics against Gram-negative bacteria with a novel mode of action, the Outer Membrane Protein Targeting Antibiotics (OMPTA). The most advanced drug candidate of this new class is murepavadin (POL7080), a highly potent antibiotic also active against multi-drug resistant strains, which started the Phase III clinical program for the treatment of patients with nosocomial pneumonia caused by infections through Pseudomonas aeruginosa, recognized as a critical priority 1 pathogen by WHO. The next generation of OMPTAs are in pre-clinical testing and are medium-spectrum antibiotics which target most important Gram-negative pathogens, including extensively drug-resistant and multidrug-resistant strains. Polyphor has a second attractive compound entering a pivotal registration trial, balixafortide (POL6326), a CXCR4 inhibitor macrocycle, aimed at combination treatment of advanced metastatic breast cancer.

“We are very honored to receive this prestigious award as it validates the importance of our innovation and the perseverance of our whole team in developing new treatments for patients so much in need,” said Daniel Obrecht, Chief Scientific Officer and Co-Founder of Polyphor. “It has been a lengthy and arduous journey, from the development of the proprietary macrocycle-based discovery platform, which is the source of the discovery and development of our product pipeline, to the pivotal trial of our lead candidate Murepavadin and we hope that our drugs will soon make a significant and transformational contribution toward the improvement of public health.”

For more information about the Swiss Innovation Forum please visit: www.swiss-innovation.com/award

About Polyphor
Polyphor is a clinical stage, Swiss biopharmaceutical company which has discovered and is developing the OMPTA (Outer Membrane Protein Targeting Antibiotics). The OMPTA are potentially the first new class of antibiotics against Gram-negative bacteria to have reached phase III stage in the last 50 years. The company’s lead product, murepavadin, (POL7080) is in Phase III development against Pseudomonas aeruginosa - recognized as a critical priority 1 pathogen by WHO. Polyphor is also developing an immuno-oncology candidate, balixafortide (POL6326), which is in preparation for a pivotal trial program in combination with eribulin in patients with advanced breast cancer, and a pipeline of further preclinical antibiotics based on its OMPTA platform. Polyphor is based in Allschwil near Basel and is listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange (SIX: POLN). For more information, please visit www.polyphor.com.

For further information please contact:

For Investors:

Kalina Scott
Chief Financial Officer
Polyphor Ltd.
Tel: +41 61 567 16 67
Email: IR@polyphor.com

For Media:

Alexandre Müller
Dynamics Group AG
Tel: +41 43 268 32 31
Email: amu@dynamicsgroup.ch