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HIGH POINT, N.C., May 11, 2004 --
TransTech Pharma, Inc. today announced that it has received two research grants totalling over $700,000. Both grants were Phase I awards under the Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR).
The first award is a two-year grant for $665,000 awarded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This Phase I grant will allow TransTech to utilize its proprietary technology to identify and optimize potential small molecule drugs to treat smallpox. This research supplements the Company's ongoing collaboration with SIGA Technologies, Inc. of Corvallis, Oregon, a publicly traded company with significant anti-viral expertise. This grant provides TransTech an opportunity to apply for a much larger Phase II research grant with the same agency to provide continued support for the development of small molecule drug candidates that are identified as a result of the research conducted in the Phase I grant.
The second award is a six-month Phase I Department of Defense grant of $65,000 awarded by the U.S. Army. The grant was awarded to TransTech in order to enhance its proprietary computational technology to generate molecular models and use them to design/identify novel chemical inhibitors against specific targets of interest to the Army. The Company has applied for a Phase II research grant of $730,000 to continue the enhancement of its proprietary technology against targets of interest to the Army.
Adnan Mjalli, Ph.D., Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of TransTech, said, "We are pleased with the receipt of both of these awards and believe they point to the value of our proprietary technology and its ability to speed up the drug discovery process. Each of these awards will provide additional financial support for TransTech to continue to enhance its drug discovery and development capabilities and to accelerate our smallpox grant program to develop a therapeutic against a virus of national defense interest."
TransTech Pharma is a privately held drug discovery company employing approximately 72 people. The Company's high-throughput drug discovery platform, Translational Technology® translates the wealth of information from genomics and proteomics into novel and effective small molecules as therapeutics. TransTech has developed several internal drug discovery programs in various stages of pre-clinical and clinical development for the treatment of human diseases of unmet medical need including thrombosis, Alzheimer's dementia, diabetes/obesity and the neutralization of potential biowarfare agents. In addition to its internal drug discovery programs, TransTech is actively involved in three research collaborations to discover and develop drug candidates with pharmaceutical/biotech companies Novo Nordisk A/S, Cephalon, Inc. and SIGA Technologies, Inc. For further information about the company, go to its web site at www.ttpharma.com. |