ROCKVILLE, Md., July 14, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Rexahn Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NYSE MKT:RNN), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing best-in-class therapeutics for the treatment of cancer, today announced that it was issued patent number 5749273 from the Japanese Patent Office entitled “Polymeric Systems for the Delivery of Anticancer Drugs” for the Company’s novel CPMA drug delivery platform. This new CPMA drug delivery platform technology, developed by Rexahn, enables more precise, targeted delivery of anti-cancer drugs directly into cancer cells.
“There is a significant unmet need in the oncology field for drugs which selectively target and kill cancer cells while sparing normal, healthy cells. By utilizing our proprietary CPMA polymer drug delivery technology and combining it with currently approved anti-cancer drugs, we hope to transport anti-cancer drugs directly into cancerous cells where their cytotoxic activity can be most effective, thereby increasing efficacy and minimizing the harmful side effects associated with traditional cancer therapy,” said Dr. Peter D. Suzdak, Chief Executive Officer. “Rexahn Pharmaceuticals is pleased to be at the forefront of the development of novel, targeted approaches to cancer treatment, which could yield meaningful improvements in quality of life for cancer patients.”
Dr. Suzdak continued, “Rexahn remains committed to ensuring the strongest possible intellectual property protection for our proprietary anti-cancer programs and platform technologies. We are pleased to be issued this latest patent, which expands our intellectual property estate and extends intellectual property protection for the CPMA platform.”
About Rexahn’s Proprietary CPMA Drug Delivery Platform
CPMA is a polymer based drug delivery platform for the targeted delivery of anti-cancer compounds directly to cancer cells. The highly versatile chemical properties of CPMA allow it to be covalently linked to a diverse range of anti-cancer compounds together with a signaling moiety directing it to cancer cells and bypassing healthy tissues. Once inside a cancer cell, the covalent linker is metabolized yielding the free anti-cancer compound. CPMA has the flexibility to covalently bind multiple anti-cancer compounds into a single formulation. Because it is highly water soluble, CPMA also enables compounds that are water insoluble to be more effectively delivered and bioavailable.