Geneva, Switzerland, 28 July 2008 – Addex Pharmaceuticals is pleased to announce the appointment of Laurent Galibert to its executive management team, as head of the Addex Inflammation Business Unit. 

Vincent Mutel, CEO, said, “I am confident that Dr. Galibert’s expertise and leadership in inflammation and immunology will attract an exciting team of experienced inflammation researchers to Addex. Along with CNS and metabolic disorders, inflammation is an important therapeutic area where we have identified low-hanging fruit in the form of clinically validated targets where orally available allosteric modulators can provide significant improvements over injectable drugs on the market and in development.”

Immediately prior to joining Addex Dr. Galibert was senior staff scientist at Merck Serono. From 1996-2005 he held successive research positions at Immunex Corp. (acquired by Amgen Inc.) and Amgen, where he cloned the receptor activator of nuclear factor kappa B ligand (RANKL) and co-authored the initial patent leading to the development of Amgen's denosumab, a monoclonal antibody against RANKL, which is in Phase III development for postmenopausal osteoporosis and in clinical development for other indications. From 1991-1995 Dr. Galibert was a PhD fellow at Schering-Plough. 

“I am excited to help focus the Addex allosteric modulation discovery and development platform on high value clinically validated inflammation targets that have been intractable to other types of small molecule chemistry,” Galibert said. 

About Addex 

Addex Pharmaceuticals discovers and develops allosteric modulators for human health. Allosteric modulators are an emerging class of orally available small molecule therapeutic agents that we believe will offer patients better results than classical drugs. Most marketed drugs bind receptors where the body’s own natural molecular activators (i.e. endogenous ligands) bind, specifically to a key part of each receptor’s anatomy called the “active site”. In short, most drugs must out-compete endogenous ligands for the active site. By contrast, allosteric modulators are non-competitive because they bind receptors and modify their function even if the endogenous ligand also is binding it. In addition, because of this, allosteric modulators aren’t limited to simply turning a receptor on or off, the way most drugs are. Instead, they act more like a dimmer switch, offering control over the degree of activation or deactivation, while offering the body the ability to maintain control over initiating receptor activation. Furthermore, the allosteric approach generally affords freedom to operate – even on well-known, clinically validated targets – because the intellectual property surrounding allosteric chemistry and the allosteric sites on receptors is most often un-exploited.

ADX10059, our most advanced product, is an mGluR5 NAM (metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 negative allosteric modulator). It has demonstrated clinically and statistically significant efficacy in separate Phase IIa clinical trials in gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) patients and migraine headache patients and has potential in additional indications. 

The Addex allosteric modulation discovery and development platform have been additionally validated through three seperatate product license or collaboration agreements with Merck & Co., Inc. and Johnson & Johnson as well as investments by Roche Ventures and SR One, the venture investment arm of GlaxoSmithKline.

Contacts 

Chris Maggos
Head of IR & Communications
Addex Pharmaceuticals
 +41 22 884 15 11   
chris.maggos(at)addexpharma.com


Disclaimer 

The foregoing release contains forward-looking statements that can be identified by terminology such as "not approvable", "continue", "believes", "believe", "will", "remained open to exploring", "would", "could", or similar expressions, or by express or implied discussions regarding Addex Pharmaceuticals Ltd, its business, the potential approval of its products by regulatory authorities, or regarding potential future revenues from such products. Such forward-looking statements reflect the current views of Addex Pharmaceuticals Ltd regarding future events, and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results with allosteric modulators of mGluR4, mGluR2, mGluR5 or other therapeutic targets to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. There can be no guarantee that allosteric modulators of mGluR4, mGluR2 or mGluR5 will be approved for sale in any market or by any regulatory authority. Nor can there be any guarantee that allosteric modulators of mGluR4, mGluR2, mGluR5 or other therapeutic targets will achieve any particular levels of revenue (if any) in the future. In particular, management's expectations regarding  allosteric modulators of mGluR4, mGluR2, mGluR5 or other therapeutic targets could be affected by, among other things, unexpected actions by our partners, unexpected regulatory actions or delays or government regulation generally; unexpected clinical trial results, including unexpected new clinical data and unexpected additional analysis of existing clinical data; competition in general; government, industry and general public pricing pressures; the company's ability to obtain or maintain patent or other proprietary intellectual property protection. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those anticipated, believed, estimated or expected. Addex Pharmaceuticals is providing the information in this press release as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.