London, UK, 14 April 2015 – Verona Pharma plc (AIM: VRP), the drug development company focused on first-in-class medicines to treat respiratory diseases, reports that the Company CEO, Dr Jan-Anders Karlsson, will be presenting at the 11th Annual Asthma and COPD Conference, taking place at the Holiday Inn Regents Park, London at 13:30 today.
The oral presentation will discuss “RPL554 as a novel treatment for severe COPD”. COPD is one of the most common chronic diseases in the world, and the prevalence is increasing. In the UK, COPD is one of the most common causes of hospitalisation and more effective treatments are needed to reduce exacerbations of this disease. The presentation supports Verona Pharma’s view that the emerging profile of RPL554 suggests that it could potentially become an important addition to available treatment options both as a monotherapy and, as a result of its unique mechanism of action, as a combination partner for existing drugs for COPD. Verona Pharma has demonstrated in previous clinical trials that RPL554 has the unique ability to combine potent bronchodilation with broad anti-inflammatory activity in a single molecule. The Company is initially developing RPL554 as a treatment for acute exacerbations in COPD, where they believe it has significant potential in a market for nebulised bronchodilator drugs currently worth $1 billion in the US alone.1
-Ends
For further information please contact:
Verona Pharma plc
Tel: +44 (0) 20 3283 4200
Jan-Anders Karlsson, Chief Executive Officer
FTI Consulting Tel: +44 (0)20 3727 1000 Julia Phillips / Simon Conway
Notes to Editors
About the Asthma and COPD Conference
Asthma and COPD together create an enormous public health burden and an urgent need for progress in disease understanding, therapy and care. The 11th Annual Asthma & COPD Conference provide the opportunity to share in the experiences of leading lights in the field who are addressing the challenges of solving the riddle of pathogenesis, biomarkers and endpoints, personalising therapies vs. the unmet need, tackling the causes and consequences of exacerbations, development of new animal models and better tools for disease diagnosis and monitoring.
This conference will give delegates invaluable insights into the key thinking and advances in the respiratory drug market, focusing on the challenges and solutions to enhance patient outcomes, providing extensive knowledge from the key leading industry, academic and care providing experts.
Further information on the conference can be accessed via the following weblink: http://www.smi-online.co.uk/pharmaceuticals/uk/conference/asthma-copd.
About Verona Pharma plc
Verona Pharma plc is a UK-based clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of innovative prescription medicines to treat respiratory diseases with significant unmet medical needs, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma and cystic fibrosis.
Verona Pharma’s lead drug, RPL554, is a first-in-class drug currently in Phase II trials as a nebulised treatment for acute exacerbations of COPD in the hospital setting. The drug is a dual phosphodiesterase (PDE) 3/4 inhibitor and therefore has both bronchodilator and anti-inflammatory effects, which are essential to the improvement of patients with COPD and asthma.
Verona Pharma is also building a broader portfolio of RPL554-containing products to maximise its benefit to patients and its value. This includes the very significant markets for COPD and asthma maintenance therapy. The Company is also exploring the potential of the drug in different diseases, such as cystic fibrosis, where it is in pre-clinical testing and has recently received a Venture and Innovation Award from the Cystic Fibrosis Trust.
About Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)
Sixty-five million people worldwide suffer from moderate to severe COPD and the World Health Organisation (WHO) expects COPD to be the 3rd leading cause of death globally by 2020. It is the only major chronic disease with increasing mortality. Currently available drugs are aimed at long-term maintenance therapy, with the market dominated by large pharma. Despite the wide availability of these therapies, COPD patients suffer acute periods of worsening symptoms (exacerbations), which cause, in the US alone, some 1.5 million A&E visits, 726,000 hospitalisations and 120,000 deaths per annum.
Bronchodilating therapy is considered to be the standard of care, and agents can be administered via handheld devices such as metered dose inhaler (MDI), dry powder inhaler (DPI) and by nebulisers. The nebulised bronchodilator market was worth about $1 billion in 2014 in the US.1 RPL554 is being developed by Verona Pharma as an add-on therapy to the “Standard of Care” with the objectives of providing rapid and pronounced improvement in lung function, reduced symptoms and both shortened duration of hospital stays and reduced re-admission rates 30 days after discharge from hospital. Studies to date on RPL554 have demonstrated that it has a strongly differentiated 3-way mode of action, being: (1) bronchodilation (the relaxation of smooth muscle in the airway); (2) anti-inflammatory effects on cells and (3) ion channel activation in epithelial cells, with increased mucociliary clearance of the airway.
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