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RNS Number : 8861F

Lipoxen PLC

04 May 2011

4 May 2011

Lipoxen plc

('Lipoxen' or the 'Company')

US$100,000 grant win

Lipoxen (AIM: LPX.L), a bio-pharmaceutical company specialising in the development of high-value differentiated biologicals, vaccines and siRNA delivery, receives US$100,000 Grand Challenges Explorations Grant for Ground-Breaking Research in Global Health and Development.

Lipoxen announces that it is a Grand Challenges Explorations winner, an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Dr David Moss, Director of Project Management at Lipoxen, will pursue an innovative global health and development research project, titled "Development of a non-live liposomal polio vaccine".

Grand Challenges Explorations (GCE) funds scientists and researchers worldwide to explore ideas that can break the mould in how we solve persistent global health and development challenges. Lipoxen's project is one of 88 Grand Challenges Explorations Round 6 grants announced by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

"GCE winners are expanding the pipeline of ideas for serious global health and development challenges where creative thinking is most urgently needed. These grants are meant to spur on new discoveries that could ultimately save millions of lives," said Chris Wilson, Director of Global Health Discovery at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

To receive funding, Lipoxen and other Grand Challenges Explorations Round 6 winners demonstrated in a two-page online application a bold idea in one of five critical global heath and development topic areas: polio eradication, HIV, sanitation and family health technologies, and mobile health.

This project aims to create a novel highly efficacious polio vaccine formulation by utilising Lipoxen's ImuXen(R) technology to entrap and deliver polio antigens to the immune system using liposomes. ImuXen(R) vaccines characteristically induce rapid onset immunity using lower doses of antigen and after fewer administrations.

Commenting on the grant award, M. Scott Maguire, Lipoxen's Chief Executive Officer, said: "For our proposal to be selected as one of 88 to be funded from more than 2,500 applicants is testament to the innovative nature of our approach. A next generation non-live polio vaccine will be extremely useful in support of the ongoing Global Poliovirus Eradication Initiative. We believe that the application of our ImuXen(R) technology to this project will result in a highly effective vaccine displaying the optimum immunological characteristics associated with both the current inactivated and live polio vaccines. Furthermore, as we will only employ recombinant antigens we have removed all of the risks associated with vaccine production using live poliovirus. This should make manufacturing both easier and more economical."

Contact Details

 
Walbrook PR Ltd                       +44 (0)20 7933 8780 
Paul McManus (Media Enquiries)        Mob: 07980 541 893 
                                       paul.mcmanus@walbrookpr.com 
Paul Cornelius (Investor Enquiries)   Mob: 07866 384 707 
                                       paul.cornelius@walbrookir.com

About Grand Challenges Explorations

Grand Challenges Explorations is a US$100 million initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Launched in 2008, Grand Challenge Explorations grants have already been awarded to nearly 500 researchers from over 40 countries. The grant program is open to anyone from any discipline and from any organization. The initiative uses an agile, accelerated grant-making process with short two-page online applications and no preliminary data required. Initial grants of $100,000 are awarded two times a year. Successful projects have the opportunity to receive a follow-on grant of up to US$1 million.

About Lipoxen

Lipoxen plc is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of new and improved biologic drugs and vaccines. Lipoxen has three proprietary patented technology platforms:

1) PolyXen - for extending the efficacy and half life of biologic drugs

2) ImuXen - for creating new vaccines and improving existing vaccines

3) SiRNAblate - for the delivery of siRNA

Lipoxen's technology is designed to improve the efficacy, safety, stability, biological half-life and immunologic characteristics of its products.

Lipoxen has multiple drug and vaccine programmes in development. Two products are in clinical development, SuliXen, a long acting insulin and ErepoXen, a long-acting erythropoietin (EPO). Lipoxen's preclinical pipeline includes vaccines against HIV, multiple sclerosis and influenza and an exclusive license deal with Baxter Healthcare for blood coagulation drugs.

The Company has a low-risk business model and out-licenses its proprietary technologies to biopharmaceutical companies that have strong manufacturing and marketing capabilities. Lipoxen currently has commercial agreements with some of the world's leading biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies including Baxter, Schering-Plough, the Serum Institute of India Limited, Genentech, and Genzyme. Furthermore, Baxter, the Company's third largest shareholder, and management led the GBP2.9 million fundraising that the Company announced in May 2009. This fundraising was followed up by a GBP1.2 million placing in April 2010 which was led by the Company's management team.

Lipoxen, which was founded in 1997, trades on the AIM Market of the London Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol LPX. More information can be found at the Company's website: www.lipoxen.com.

This information is provided by RNS

The company news service from the London Stock Exchange

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