TORONTO and SINGAPORE,
March 4, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- TauRx
Pharmaceuticals Ltd. ("TauRx") announced today the receipt of an
equity investment of USD10.5m from
Dundee Corporation of Toronto
("Dundee"). The investment
will be used by TauRx primarily to support the on-going program of
three Phase 3 clinical trials of LMTX™, its novel compound
currently in development as a disease-modifying treatment for
Alzheimer's Disease ("AD") and behavioural-variant Fronto-Temporal
Dementia ("bvFTD").
Dundee made its initial
investment of USD20m in TauRx in
September 2011. Ned Goodman,
President and Chief Executive Officer of Dundee, said: "TauRx has made good use of our
initial investment, gaining regulatory clearance to initiate its
Phase 3 study program for LMTX™ and establishing a network of
experienced service providers to support the studies. With
the first patients now being enrolled into each of the three
studies, and with the recent substantial strategic investment from
the Genting Berhad group, this seems a highly opportune time to
exercise the option we were granted by TauRx at the time of the
initial investment and maintain Dundee's 5% interest in this commercially and
scientifically promising company."
Professor Claude Wischik,
Executive Chairman and Co-Founder of TauRx, said: "It is
particularly gratifying to receive this follow-on investment from
Dundee. It made its initial investment at a time of critical
importance to the development of both TauRx and our Tau aggregation
inhibitor, LMTX™, and we see this additional investment of
USD10.5m as a welcome vote of
confidence in the commercial potential of our technology from a
highly experienced investor. We continue to believe strongly
that Tau aggregation inhibition is the most promising approach to
the long-term treatment of AD and other Tau-opathies such as
bvFTD. With expanding patient populations throughout the
world due to an aging population, and with products based on
beta-amyloid clearance still producing disappointing results in
clinical studies, it is now critically important for healthcare
systems, patients, their families and their careers to bring an
effective treatment for these devastating diseases to market."
About TauRx Therapeutics:
TauRx Therapeutics Ltd was established in Singapore in 2002 with the aim of developing
new treatments and diagnostics for a range of neurodegenerative
diseases based on an entirely new approach which targets aggregates
of abnormal fibres of Tau protein that form inside nerve cells in
the brain. The TauRx team have since discovered that LMTX™ could
also have beneficial effects in several other neurodegenerative
diseases associated with Tau pathology, as well as other protein
aggregation disorders including Parkinson's, Huntington's and
Frontotemporol Dementia [FTD-Pick's Disease]. The TauRx corporate
headquarters are in Singapore and
its primary research facilities are in Aberdeen, Scotland.
About Dundee Corporation:
Dundee Corporation is a Canadian independent publicly traded
asset management company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange
("TSX") under the symbol "DC.A". Asset management activities are
focused in the areas of the corporation's core competencies and
include resources, real estate and infrastructure, and more
recently, the agriculture sector. These activities are carried out
by Dundee's wholly owned
subsidiary, Goodman Investment Counsel Inc. Dundee's capital markets and personal
investment advisory services are carried out through the "Dundee
Capital Markets" and "Dundee Goodman Private Wealth" divisions of
its wholly owned subsidiary, Dundee Securities Ltd. Dundee
also owns and manages direct investments in its core focus areas
and other select investments, through ownership, directly and
indirectly, of both publicly listed and private companies.
SOURCE TauRx Pharmaceuticals Ltd.