Inimex Pharmaceuticals begins First Clinical Study of an Innate Defense Regulator
Phase 1 healthy volunteer study of IMX942 will provide human safety and pharmacodynamic data
Inimex Pharmaceuticals announced that its novel Innate Defense Regulator (IDR) IMX942 was administered to human subjects for the first time on April 27, 2009. The healthy volunteers were enrolled in a Phase 1 safety study of IMX942 being performed for Inimex in Montreal with the approval of Health Canada.
"With this transition of IMX942 into clinical development, we are looking forward to demonstrating the safety and biological effects of our IDR drugs in humans," explains Dr. John R. North, President and CEO of Inimex Pharmaceuticals, Inc. "We are excited that we will soon be in a position to test IMX942, the first of this truly innovative new class of drugs, in patients at risk of infection; we expect to launch the first Phase 2a study during 2010 in the USA under an Investigational New Drug (IND) application."
IMX942 is the first of a new class of drugs known as Innate Defense Regulators, which modulate innate defenses to improve survival, reduce bacterial infections and suppress inflammation. IMX942 is a small, proprietary, fully synthetic peptide that binds to an intracellular adaptor protein and modifies the signaling network downstream of TLR, TNF, and IL-1 receptors. IMX942 has no direct anti-bacterial activity but can control the outcome of infections caused by a broad spectrum of pathogens; in future clinical studies it will be developed for control of infections in high risk patients in the hospital setting.
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