IXICO plc EUR1m funding as a partner in major EU consortium (0744M)

TIDMIXI

RNS Number : 0744M

IXICO plc

10 October 2016

10 October 2016

IXICO plc

("IXICO" or the "Company")

IXICO to receive EUR1m funding as a partner in a major EU public-private consortium

Potential for long-term revenue opportunities through developing novel diagnostic and disease management technologies for Alzheimer's Disease

IXICO, the brain health company, today announces its participation in the Innovative Medicines Initiative focused on Amyloid Imaging to Prevent Alzheimers Disease (AMYPAD). This innovative collaboration between leading academic, healthcare and pharmaceutical partners, including GE Healthcare, Piramal Imaging and Janssen Pharmaceutica JPNV, will investigate the use of amyloid brain scans to improve the diagnosis and management of Alzheimer's Disease (AD).

IXICO's TrialTracker(R) and Assessa(R) technology platforms will be deployed at the heart of this five year project to evaluate and enhance the way that amyloid PET scans can be used to support the development of new therapies for the treatment of patients with AD. Amyloid PET can image the <BETA>-amyloid molecules in the brain that are associated with AD and which accumulate in the brain long before serious symptoms appear. Through understanding <BETA>-amyloid, AMYPAD aims to improve the diagnosis and management of the disease, understand the natural history in pre-symptomatic stage and select people for treatment or trials aimed at preventing AD.

The Company will receive EUR1 million over the life of the project, for the use of TrialTracker(R) and Assessa(R) technology platforms, covering the cost of the Company's participation.

Derek Hill, CEO of IXICO, said: "IXICO is proud to be participating in this important initiative. Our involvement in the AMYPAD project demonstrates not only our continued success in deploying our key technology platforms across major neurodegenerative disease indications, including our collaboration with Biogen and clinical centres in multiple sclerosis, but also our longstanding reputation and experience in Alzheimer's Disease. AD has a significant impact on peoples' lives and we believe that with the help of IXICO's expertise, AMYPAD may pave the way to improve the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of people living with this disease."

Dr Gill Farrar, AMYPAD Project leader and Scientific Director at GE Healthcare Life Sciences, commented: "AMYPAD will apply amyloid PET on an unprecedented scale to patients who are suspected to be in the early stages of AD and generate the knowledge to fully integrate PET <BETA>-amyloid markers into current clinical practice in a cost-efficient way, by demonstrating its diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic value from a multi-stakeholder perspective."

AMYPAD will utilise the European-wide register of 24,000 patients created by the European Prevention of Alzheimer's Dementia Initiative (EPAD), of which IXICO is also a partner. IXICO's TrialTracker(R) platform will collect and manage 6,000 Amyloid PET scans acquired at clinical centres across Europe and Assessa(R) will be used to analyse PET data, combined with other data captured from patients, to help identify those people who could benefit from enrolment in clinical trials aimed at preventing AD.

For further information please contact:

 
 IXICO plc 
  Derek Hill, Chief Executive Officer     Tel: [phone] 
  Susan Lowther, Chief Financial          7499 
  Officer 
 
 Shore Capital (Nomad and Broker)       Tel: [phone] 
  Bidhi Bhoma / Edward Mansfield         4090 
 
 FTI Consulting Limited (Investor       Tel: [phone] 
  Relations)                             1000 
  Simon Conway/Mo Noonan/Matthew 
  Moss 
 

About IXICO

IXICO's innovative and proprietary digital healthcare technologies help those involved in researching and treating serious diseases to capture and analyse clinical data to make rapid, informed decisions. In clinical research this includes the phenotyping of patients, quantification of disease pathology and measurement of patient outcomes. In clinical practice the mobile health and digital decision support technologies aid diagnosis, patient engagement and monitoring. IXICO is also collaborating with partners to develop companion digital health products targeted at improving patient outcomes.

The Company's brain health focus includes Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, behavioural health, child and adolescent mental health.

More information is available on www.ixico.com

About AMYPAD

AMYPAD is a novel research initiative between academic and private research partners to investigate the value of <BETA>-amyloid using positron emission tomography (PET) imaging as a diagnostic and therapeutic marker for Alzheimer's dementia. AMYPAD is mainly sponsored by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and the European pharmaceutical industry (via EFPIA) under the Innovative Medicines Initiative.

About the EPAD Platform/Register

The EPAD platform will draw European participants, whose records are already part of existing national/regional cohort or register studies, into an EPAD register of approximately 24,000 people. From this group, 6,000 people will be asked to join a pan-European EPAD Cohort for consistent, longitudinal follow-up, and approximately 1,500 of them will eventually be invited to enter the EPAD Proof of Concept Trial. This approach aims to ensure EPAD has access to an at-risk population showing biomarker evidence of Alzheimer's disease prior to the development of dementia.

About the Innovative Medicines Initiative

The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) is Europe's largest public-private initiative aiming to speed up the development of better and safer medicines for patients. IMI supports collaborative research projects and builds networks of industrial and academic experts in order to boost pharmaceutical innovation in Europe. IMI is a joint undertaking between the European Union and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations, EFPIA.

More information can be found at www.imi.europa.eu

Acknowledgement

The research leading to these results has received support from the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking, resources of which are composed of financial contribution from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) and EFPIA companies' in kind contribution.

This information is provided by RNS

The company news service from the London Stock Exchange

END

MSCUGGUGUUPQGCB

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 10, 2016 02:00 ET (06:00 GMT)