Verona Pharma
plc
("Verona Pharma" or the
"Company")
Confirmation of
General Meeting Date
1 July 2016, Cardiff – Verona Pharma plc (AIM: VRP),
the drug development company focused on first-in-class medicines to
treat respiratory diseases, confirms that, further to the Notice of
Meeting contained within the Circular posted to Shareholders on
17 June 2016 in relation to the
Proposed Placing, the General Meeting of the Company will be held
at 11.00 a.m. on 22 July 2016 at the offices of Shakespeare
Martineau LLP whose address as of 18 July
2016 is Allianz House,
6th Floor, 60 Gracechurch Street, London, EC3V 0HR.
Capitalised terms in this announcement have the same meaning as
in the Circular being published in conjunction with the proposed
placing.
The expected timetable of principal events remains as previously
stated, namely:
Latest time and date
for receipt of completed
Forms of Proxy to be valid at the General Meeting |
11.00 a.m. on 20 July 2016
|
General Meeting |
11.00 a.m. on 22 July
2016
|
Announcement of results
of General Meeting |
22 July 2016
|
Admission to trading
and commencement of dealings
in the Placing Shares on AIM
|
29 July 2016 |
Despatch of definitive
share certificates for Placing Shares
in certificated form |
by 16 August 2016 |
Despatch of definitive
certificates for Warrants |
by 16 August 2016 |
Notes:
(1) References to times
are to London time (unless
otherwise stated).
(2) If any of the above
times or dates should change, the revised times and/or dates will
be notified by an announcement to an RIS and otherwise communicated
to Placees.
(3) Certain of the events
in the above timetable are conditional upon, amongst other things,
the approval of the Resolutions to be proposed at the General
Meeting.
(4) The Warrants will
not be separately admitted to trading on AIM, but the Warrant
Shares which will arise following any valid exercise of Warrants
will be admitted to trading in due course as part of the single
class of shares admitted to trading on AIM.
-Ends-
For further information please
contact:
Verona Pharma plc |
Tel: +44 (0)20 3283
4200 |
Jan-Anders Karlsson, Chief Executive
Officer |
|
|
|
N+1 Singer |
Tel: +44 (0)20 7496
3000 |
Aubrey Powell / Jen Boorer |
|
|
|
FTI Consulting |
Tel: +44 (0)20 3727
1000 |
Simon Conway/Stephanie Cuthbert |
|
Notes to Editors
About Verona Pharma plc
Verona Pharma plc is a UK-based clinical stage biopharmaceutical
company focused on the development of innovative prescription
medicines to treat respiratory diseases with significant unmet
medical needs, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
(COPD), asthma and cystic fibrosis.
Verona Pharma's lead drug, RPL554, is a first-in-class drug
currently in phase II trials as a nebulised treatment for acute
exacerbations of COPD in the hospital setting. The drug is a
dual phosphodiesterase (PDE) 3/4 inhibitor and therefore has both
bronchodilator and anti-inflammatory effects, which are essential
to the improvement of patients with COPD and asthma.
Verona Pharma is also building a broader portfolio of
RPL554-containing products to maximise its benefit to patients and
its value. This includes the very significant markets for
COPD and asthma maintenance therapy. The Company is also
exploring the potential of the drug in different diseases, such as
cystic fibrosis, where it is in pre-clinical testing and has
recently received a Venture and Innovation Award from the Cystic
Fibrosis Trust.
About Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary
Disease (COPD)
Sixty-five million people worldwide suffer from moderate to
severe COPD and the World Health Organisation (WHO) expects COPD to
be the 3rd leading cause of death globally by 2020. It is the
only major chronic disease with increasing mortality.
Currently available drugs are aimed at long-term maintenance
therapy, with the market dominated by large pharma. Despite
the wide availability of these therapies, COPD patients suffer
acute periods of worsening symptoms (exacerbations), which cause,
in the US alone, some 1.5 million A&E visits, 726,000
hospitalisations and 120,000 deaths per annum.
Bronchodilating therapy is considered to be the standard of
care, and agents can be administered via handheld devices such as
metered dose inhaler (MDI), dry powder inhaler (DPI) and by
nebulisers. The nebulised bronchodilator market was worth
about $1 billion in 2014 in the
US.1 RPL554 is being developed by Verona Pharma as
an add-on therapy to the “Standard of Care” with the objectives of
providing rapid and pronounced improvement in lung function,
reduced symptoms and both shortened duration of hospital stays and
reduced re-admission rates 30 days after discharge from
hospital. Studies to date on RPL554 have demonstrated that it
has a strongly differentiated 3-way mode of action, being: (1)
bronchodilation (the relaxation of smooth muscle in the airway);
(2) anti-inflammatory effects on cells and (3) ion channel
activation in epithelial cells, with increased mucociliary
clearance of the airway.
1 IMS Consulting Group market research 2014