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PhaseRx Priced, Nasdaq: PZRX

Preclinical biotech developing treatments for inherited enzyme deficiencies in the liver.

Industry: Health Care

First Day Return: +0.4%

Industry: Health Care

We are a preclinical biopharmaceutical company developing a portfolio of products for the treatment of inherited enzyme deficiencies in the liver using intracellular enzyme replacement therapy, or i-ERT, and expect to generate clinical safety and efficacy data in 2018. We are not aware of any other enzyme replacement therapies for intracellular enzyme deficiencies currently being marketed for inherited enzyme deficiencies in the liver, and believe that the commercial potential for i-ERT is completely untapped and similar to the large and growing $4 billion worldwide market for conventional enzyme replacement therapy, or ERT, which includes drugs such as Cerezyme. Our i-ERT approach is enabled by our proprietary Hybrid messenger RNA, or mRNA, TechnologyTM platform, which allows synthesis of the missing enzyme inside the cell. Our initial product portfolio targets the three urea cycle disorders ornithine transcarbamylase deficiency, or OTCD, argininosuccinate lyase deficiency, or ASL deficiency, and argininosuccinate synthetase deficiency, or ASS1 deficiency. We have preclinical proof of concept in a mouse model of a urea cycle disorder showing significant reductions in the level of blood ammonia, which is the approvable endpoint by the Food and Drug Administration, or the FDA, for the demonstration of efficacy in human clinical trials of the urea cycle disorders. To our knowledge, there are no ERT products on the market to treat these diseases, because the urea cycle reaction occurs inside the cell and is inaccessible to the administered enzyme. In contrast, we expect delivery of the missing enzyme using i-ERT with our Hybrid mRNA Technology to be a promising approach to treat these patients. Beyond the urea cycle disorders, we believe there are a significant number of inherited disorders of metabolism in the liver that are candidates for our therapeutic approach and that proof of concept for the treatment of one inherited liver disorder with our Hybrid mRNA Technology can be adapted to develop mRNA therapeutics for the treatment of other inherited liver disorders using our platform.
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