Affinium Pharmaceuticals to Present at Super Bugs - Super Drugs Conference in London, UK

AUSTIN, March 15 /PRNewswire/ - Affinium Pharmaceuticals, a clinical-stage drug development company with a novel, specific-spectrum anti-staphylococcal antibiotic, announced today that Dr. Barry Hafkin, Chief Medical Officer, and Dr. Nachum Kaplan, Vice President of Microbiology, will present at the 13^th Annual Super Bugs and Super Drugs conference in London, England on March 16-17, 2011.

Dr Kaplan will be speaking on development of a novel, specific-spectrum, oral antibiotic for staphylococcal infections at 2:10 pm GMT on Thursday, March 17. Dr. Hafkin will moderate and participate in the panel discussion on the challenges facing antibiotic drug developers and lessons learned from recent antibiotic regulatory approvals at 4:10 pm GMT on Thursday, March 17, 2011.

Over the past two decades, Superbugs and Superdrugs has become an industry-leading conference on antibiotics and resistant organisms. The conference tackles crucial issues surrounding anti-infective drug development and the emergence of multi-resistant organisms. Visit http://www.smi-online.co.uk/events/overview.asp?is=4&ref=3444 for more information.

About Affinium Pharmaceuticals
Affinium Pharmaceuticals is a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on development of novel anti-infective medicines based on the FASII pathway. The Affinium FASII antibacterial programs constitute a new antibiotic franchise with the potential for multiple products. These programs include a broad base of long-term intellectual property: issued and pending composition of matter patents on potent orally available small molecule inhibitors of a new class of antibiotics with a unique mechanism of action, targeting an underexploited pathway. AFN- 1252 is the lead candidate from the program.

About AFN-1252
AFN-1252, the lead clinical candidate from Affinium's FASII program, is designed to selectively target the staphylococcal FabI enzyme. AFN-1252 provides exceptional nanomolar potency against all drug-resistant phenotpyes of staphylococci, including hospital- and community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and coagulasenegative staphylococci. Extremely low propensity for microbial resistance development has been observed in microbiological studies. The antibiotic has also shown excellent in vivo efficacy in animal models of infection. Oral bioavailability and excellent safety & tolerability have been demonstrated in three Phase 1 single- and multiple-ascending dose clinical trials and in human microdosing studies. An injectable formulation is advancing through pre-clinical development.

SOURCE Affinium Pharmaceuticals