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ApoImmune Awarded $500,000 from Kentucky SBIR-STTR Matching Funds Program
October 1, 2008 (Louisville, KY) - The Kentucky SBIR-STTR Matching Funds Program has awarded ApoImmune, Inc. $500,000 as a one-year match for the Company's National Institutes of Health (NIH) Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant awarded in August. This is ApoImmune's third state matching grant to be awarded in two years, and ninth NIH SBIR/STTR award.
The NIH grant of $1.64 million and newly awarded matching funds will be used for the ongoing development of ApoVax104-HPV, ApoImmune's novel therapeutic vaccine for cervical cancer and human papillomavirus infection (HPV). HPV is the virus that causes cervical cancer in women.
The one year grant will fund work to finalize the pre-clinical testing that will support submission of an Investigational New Drug (IND) application to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for approval to initiate human clinical trials. Human clinical trials will be initiated to establish the product's safety and efficacy. In preclinical studies, the vaccine has proven to be much more effective and less toxic than other vaccine components currently being tested in late stage clinical trials by large pharmaceutical companies.
The Kentucky SBIR-STTR Matching Funds Program is funded by the Department of Commercialization and Innovation within the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development. The Program is designed to award matching funds to for-profit, Kentucky-based companies that have been granted a Federal SBIR or Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I or Phase II award for research and technology development. The Kentucky SBIR-STTR Matching Funds are for additional work tasks and activities that support and are complementary to the Federal Award.
This matching grant will provide ApoImmune with significant capital needed to make sufficient progress to demonstrate to the Food and Drug Administration the readiness to conduct human clinical trials of our novel ApoVax104-HPV therapeutic for cervical cancer," stated Steven T. Downey, President & CEO of ApoImmune.
About ApoImmune, Inc.
ApoImmune Inc. is a Louisville, Kentucky-based biotechnology company developing novel immunotherapies, which are treatments based on the concept of regulating the immune system to fight disease. The Company's lead immunotherapy is based on the ProtEx technology's ability to teach the immune system to recognize foreign pathogens as harmful and specifically target those harmful cells for destruction. ApoImmune is also developing ProtEx to suppress the immune system in certain cases, which improves current organ and tissue transplant therapies by protecting the transplant from being attacked by the recipient's immune system when transplanted into the body. An added benefit of the ProtEx immune system suppression technology is that it also reduces the need for powerful immunosuppressive drugs with highly toxic effects that are required after transplantation.
For more information, visit www.apoimmune.com.
Certain statements made throughout this press release that are not historical facts contain forward-looking statements regarding the Company's future plans, objectives and expected performance. Any such forward-looking statements are based on assumptions that the Company believes are reasonable, but are subject to a wide range of risks and uncertainties and, therefore, there can be no assurance that actual results may not differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements.
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