DeuteRx Presents DRX-065 for the Treatment of NASH at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD)

DeuteRx Presents DRX-065 for the Treatment of NASH at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD)

ANDOVER, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--DeuteRx LLC, a R&D-focused biotechnology company improving racemic small molecule marketed drugs and drug candidates, today announced an upcoming oral presentation at the AASLD Annual Meeting, being held in San Francisco, CA from November 13-17, 2015.

“Pioglitazone is one of the most widely studied drugs in NASH patients. Although clinical trial results are promising, pioglitazone’s use for the treatment of NASH is limited due to the adverse side effects of weight gain and fluid retention. DeuteRx’s preclinical data with the stabilized R-enantiomer of pioglitazone, DRX-065, offers the prospect of separating the undesired weight gain and fluid retention from the beneficial therapeutic properties for NASH,” says Dr. Scott Friedman, consultant to DeuteRx. “DRX-065 represents a potentially significant therapeutic improvement over pioglitazone for NASH patients.”

Oral Presentation Details
Presentation Date/Time: Monday, November 16, 2015; 4:00 – 4:15 p.m. PT
Title: DRX-065, the stabilized R-enantiomer of pioglitazone, is without PPARγ-agonist activity and exhibits the beneficial in vivopharmacodynamic effects for the treatment of NASH
Authors: Sheila H. DeWitt, Vincent Jacques, Lex H.T. Van der Ploeg

About DRX-065 and Non-alcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH)
In preclinical experiments, DeuteRx demonstrated that DRX-065 has pharmacological properties desirable for the treatment of NASH (mitochondrial function modulation, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory effects, and glucose lowering effects) without the undesired PPARγ-related weight gain side effect. DeuteRx’s issued U.S. Patent #8,722,710 includes composition of matter claims to deuterium-enriched pioglitazone analogs, including DRX-065.

About DeuteRx LLC
DeuteRx is pioneering ‘deuterium-enabled chiral switching’ (DECS), a revolutionary approach to improve racemic (a mixture of two mirror-image compounds or enantiomers) small molecule marketed drugs and drug candidates intended for patients across multiple therapeutic indications. Numerous drugs are still developed and marketed as racemic mixtures because the enantiomers are chemically unstable and rapidly interconvert in vivo. To date, DeuteRx has demonstrated the use of DECS to stabilize the enantiomers of many racemic active ingredients. DeuteRx’s prioritized single enantiomer product assets are DRX-065 for adrenoleukodystrophy and NASH, DRX-164 for multiple myeloma and combination therapy with immuno-oncology drugs, DRX-194 for pediatric sickle cell disease, and DRX-184 for CNS disorders.

DeuteRx is a Boston-based biotechnology company founded in December 2012 as a spin-out company from Deuteria Pharmaceuticals Inc. Deuteria was sold to a major biopharmaceutical company in December 2012.

www.deuterx.com