PRINCETON, N.J., April 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Celator Pharmaceuticals today announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has issued a Notice of Allowance for a patent covering the company’s CombiPlex(R) technology platform (U.S. patent application 10/417,631), the basis for the company’s product pipeline which includes two clinical-stage products for acute myeloid leukemia and colorectal cancer.
“This broad allowance protects our ability to utilize the CombiPlex platform with a wide variety of antineoplastic agents, opening up numerous potential combinations for investigation and possible commercialization,” said Dr. Lawrence Mayer, president and head or research at Celator Pharmaceuticals.
“Extending patent protection of CombiPlex to the US strengthens our intellectual property portfolio as we advance our pipeline of cancer therapies and collaborative programs with other pharmaceutical companies,” said Scott Jackson, chief executive officer of Celator Pharmaceuticals. “The technology has already yielded promising clinical data. In December, we reported encouraging interim data from the first of two randomized Phase 2 clinical studies in patients with Acute Myeloid Leukemia treated with our lead drug, CPX-351, and we will report additional efficacy and safety data with CPX-351 later this year.”
Celator Pharmaceuticals, Inc., with locations in Princeton, NJ, and Vancouver, BC, is a privately held pharmaceutical company developing new and more effective therapies to treat cancer. CombiPlex(R), the company’s proprietary drug ratio technology platform, represents a novel approach that identifies molar ratios of drugs that will deliver a synergistic benefit, and locks the desired ratio in a nano-scale drug delivery vehicle that maintains the ratio in patients with the goal of improving clinical outcomes. The company pipeline includes two Phase 2 products; CPX-351 (a liposomal formulation of cytarabine:daunorubicin) for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia and CPX-1 (a liposomal formulation of irinotecan:floxuridine) for the treatment of colorectal cancer; a preclinical stage compound, CPX-571 (a liposomal formulation of irinotecan:cisplatin); and multiple research programs, including the hydrophobic docetaxel prodrug nanoparticle (HDPN) formulation being studied by the National Cancer Institute’s Nanotechnology Characterization Laboratory. Based on the applications of CombiPlex and the proprietary nanoparticle prodrug delivery platform, Celator is positioned to advance a broad pipeline of cancer therapies involving both previously approved and novel drug agents. For more information, please visit the company’s website at www.celatorpharma.com. Information on ongoing trials is available at www.clinicaltrials.gov.
CONTACT: Mike Beyer, +1-773-463-4211, beyer@sambrown.com
Web site: http://www.celatorpharma.com/
