Celgene Corporation, an independent biopharmaceutical company, announced that its extensive intellectual property estate for JNK (c-Jun N-terminal Kinase) has been further strengthened with U.S. Patent No. 6,514,745 that issued last week. This fundamental patent describes the c sequences encoding JNK targets that are useful to identify small molecule JNK inhibitors that could potentially treat cancer, inflammatory diseases and ischemia reperfusion injury.

"The issuance of this cornerstone patent further expands the extensive intellectual property estate covering our key JNK program," said Sol J. Barer, Ph.D., President and Chief Operating Officer of Celgene Corporation. "Our lead JNK inhibitor, CC-401, successfully completed a Phase I safety trial in healthy volunteers, and based on the data, we look forward to advancing the development of our deep pipeline of novel JNK inhibitors in a broad range of chronic and acute diseases."

The JNK gene regulation pathway has been shown to play an essential role in the onset and progression of a variety of important human diseases that involve inflammation, cell death, ischemia reperfusion injury and cellular proliferation. Over-activation of the JNK pathway increases expression of a broad set of genes, including tumor necrosis factor-alpha, interleukin-2 and gamma interferon, which are believed to be important mechanisms in autoimmune, inflammatory, cardiovascular and neurological diseases as well as cancer.

Celgene has a major drug discovery program focused on developing novel small molecule therapies to modulate the JNK signaling pathway. These efforts have resulted in the successful development of multiple series of proprietary JNK inhibitors. The lead Celgene JNK inhibitor, CC-401, successfully completed a Phase I, double-blind, placebo controlled, ascending single intravenous dose study in healthy human volunteers. In addition, Celgene has advanced several JNK drug leads to testing in in vivo models of diabetes, stroke, rheumatoid arthritis, organ transplantation, asthma and cancer. The compounds have demonstrated significant activity in each preclinical disease model and were well tolerated in these studies.

Celgene has a dominant and expanding intellectual property estate covering the JNK pathway and JNK genes, JNK polypeptides and proteins, expression systems for protein production, JNK screening technology, JNK targets and therapeutic uses of molecules modulating JNK activity. This patent estate comprises twelve issued U.S. patents and five foreign patents through licenses with the University of California and the University of Massachusetts and patents held by Celgene. Celgene's comprehensive JNK patent portfolio is expected to expand further as Celgene has various pending U.S. and foreign patent applications. Celgene has not licensed any rights to its JNK program to date, retaining exclusive worldwide rights for all disease indications.