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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Clarice Merrill, Direct Therapeutics Awarded Patent for Medical Injection DeviceNew design allows doctors to more accurately administer drugs directly to a disease site July 20, 2001 (Redwood City, CA) - Direct Therapeutics, Inc. (DTI), a drug development company advancing its proprietary solvent-facilitated perfusion technology, announced today that it has been awarded U.S. patent #6,203,526 for its design of a medical injection device used during image-guided surgery. The device enables surgeons to optimize the delivery of a drug or other therapeutic agent directly into a variety of human tissues. "The patent for this device complements related intellectual property covering our solvent-facilitated perfusion technology, which enables high concentrations of tissue-penetrating drugs to be delivered directly to the target organ," said Dennis Pietronigro, Ph.D., Chief Science Officer at Direct Therapeutics. "We recognized the utility of a device that assures precise drug placement while developing DTI-015, our potent anti-cancer product designed for direct injection to brain and liver tumors." This is the third U.S. patent issued to Direct Therapeutics. DTI's first two U.S. patents cover formulations of anti-cancer agents in water-miscible, organic, tumor-penetrating solvent vehicles. Patents corresponding to these have also been issued in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. The company has a fourth, broader patent pending in the U.S. and internationally for its overall approach to formulating therapeutic agents in tissue-penetrating organic solvents vehicles for intra-tissue injection. Direct Therapeutics, Inc. is a privately held drug development company using its proprietary technology to address the delivery and distribution of drugs for the localized and regional treatment of disease. The company's patented delivery technology encompasses the development of therapeutic agents in water-miscible organic solvent vehicles that facilitate the rapid, thorough drug saturation of a target tissue. The company's lead product, DTI-015 (BCNU in ethanol) is currently in Phase I/II trials for treatment of glioblastoma multiforme, the most common and deadly form of primary brain cancer. The company was recently awarded a Small Business Innovation Research grant by the National Institutes of Health to develop non-invasive imaging techniques to map the anti-tumor activity of DTI-015 in brain tumors. For more information about the company, please visit www.directtherapeutics.com. |