CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRT), a biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering and developing small molecule drugs to treat diseases of aging such as Type 2 Diabetes, announced today that the United States Patent Office issued to Sirtris the first patent covering a broad class of compounds that activate the enzyme SIRT1. Several Sirtris compounds—or new chemical entities (NCEs)—from this class lower glucose and improve insulin sensitivity in preclinical models of Type 2 Diabetes. The patent covers the first NCE that Sirtris plans to take into a human clinical safety trial in the first half of 2008.
