Neurologix receives US PTO Notice of Allowance concerning treatment approach for epilepsy

Mar 15 2010

Neurologix, Inc. (OTCBB:NRGX) today announced that it has received a Notice of Allowance from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (US PTO) for intellectual property central to the company’s approach to the treatment of epilepsy. The patent allowance specifically refers to Neurologix’s patent application, “Methods and Compositions for the Treatment of Neurological Disease,” which covers the treatment of seizures associated with temporal lobe epilepsy by direct administration into the brain’s temporal lobe of an AAV vector encoding Neuropeptide Y (NPY). Neurologix is a biotechnology company engaged in the development of innovative therapies for the brain and central nervous system, including Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, Huntington’s disease and other disorders.

“This Notice of Allowance further validates the innovative nature of Neurologix’s proprietary technology platform and approach to the treatment of central nervous system diseases, and underscores our company’s leadership in the emerging field of Molecular Medicine for neurological disorders”

“This Notice of Allowance further validates the innovative nature of Neurologix’s proprietary technology platform and approach to the treatment of central nervous system diseases, and underscores our company’s leadership in the emerging field of Molecular Medicine for neurological disorders,” said Martin J. Kaplitt, M.D., Neurologix’s Chairman of the Board. “In the case of refractory temporal lobe epilepsy, we hope to improve on the effectiveness and reduce the invasiveness of current surgical treatments by delivering the human NPY gene directly to the hippocampus of the brain, thereby inhibiting seizures without the need for surgical resection of functional brain tissue, the current standard of care for this disease. Temporal lobe epilepsy, affecting over 1 million patients in the United States, represents a major unmet medical need, where traditional pharmacological therapies have proven unsatisfactory. This strategy builds on the experience Neurologix has gained through our similar gene transfer approach to treating Parkinson’s disease, where we are now awaiting efficacy results from our Phase 2 trial around mid-year.”

Preclinical results published in the Journal of Neuroscience, Epilepsia, Experimental Neurology (2004, 2006, 2009) and the May 2008 issue of Brain have consistently demonstrated the efficacy of Neurologix’s therapeutic approach to temporal lobe epilepsy, including the prevention of spontaneous seizures and suppression of disease progression in chronic epilepsy rodent models.