EPIX Pharmaceuticals, Inc. has announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office will issue to EPIX patent number 7,153,858, entitled "New Arylpiperazinyl Compounds."

The granted claims of the patent include the class of selective 5-HT1A binding compounds discovered by EPIX, pharmaceutical compositions containing them, and specific compounds, including PRX-00023.

"This patent is the second US patent issued to EPIX for our four-year old drug discovery programme and marks yet another significant achievement for EPIX in the past month. We recently announced a strategic worldwide collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline for four of our G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) targets, including PRX-03140 for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. Like that collaboration, this patent is further validation of EPIX's ability to synthesize and develop novel drugs that modulate promising GPCR drug targets, such as the 5-HT1A receptor," said Michael G. Kauffman, MD, PhD, chief executive officer of EPIX Pharmaceuticals.

"We look forward to continuing to advance the clinical development of PRX-00023 into a phase 2b clinical trial in major depression in the first half of this year."

Discovered and designed using its proprietary structure-based drug discovery technology and approach, EPIX is developing PRX-00023 for the treatment of depression. EPIX's highly selective 5-HT1A agonists, including PRX-00023, were discovered and optimised using Predict the company's proprietary GPCR modeling technology.