The US-based Nobex Corporation, a drug development company specialising in medicinal chemistry-based drug delivery, announced the schedule for conducting the auction of its assets, primarily intellectual property rights, pursuant to the supervision of the Delaware Bankruptcy Court.

Under the schedule approved by the Court, potential bidders must post a bid deposit and file a form of purchase agreement by noon on March 13, 2006. The auction will be conducted at noon on March 16, 2006; and the Court has scheduled a hearing to approve the highest or otherwise best bid or bids on March 20, 2006 at 2:00 p.m. at prevailing Eastern Time. Bidders may bid on all or part of the assets. Nobex anticipates a closing with the successful bidder or bidders prior to March 31, 2006.

An opening stalking horse bid of $3.5 million has been received from Biocon Limited, a biopharmaceutical manufacturing firm in India that is party to certain joint development and licensee agreements with Nobex.

The auction is expected to generate interest from private equity firms and companies with an interest in protein drug development or drug delivery. Selected assets that are available for purchase include IN-105, an oral insulin for type 2 diabetes; BN-054, an oral B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) for cardiovascular disease; Oratonin, an oral calcitonin in phase 1 trials for osteoporosis; and APAZA, an oral small molecule drug in phase 1/2 trials for inflammatory bowel disease. The first three assets utilise the company's technology for the oral delivery of protein and peptide drugs, which could transform the therapeutic use for many peptide drugs enhancing clinical outcomes and improving economic efficiencies in the healthcare system.

The intellectual property portfolio built by the company dominates the industry in the area of oral delivery of structurally modified peptide and protein drugs. The Nobex IP portfolio is one of the biopharmaceutical industry's pre eminent IP portfolios in the area of structural transformation of naturally occurring peptides of therapeutic utility to improve physicochemical and biological properties for any route of administration.

"Nobex has demonstrated technical proof of concept of its proprietary medicinal chemistry through phase I and phase II clinical data, which shows biological activity via oral administration in man with two modified peptide molecules: calcitonin and insulin," stated Charles Dimmler, chairman of Nobex.

"With a purchaser's support, our hope is that the scientific advances made by Nobex since 1993 reflected in the data and the IP portfolio will ultimately benefit people around the world," added Dimmler.

SSG Capital Advisors, L.P. in Philadelphia has been retained as investment banker to Nobex for the auction process. Scott Victor, managing director of SSG, stated, "We look forward to a thorough and energetic sale process. A number of parties have indicated preliminary interest and we have begun the process of furnishing information to potential bidders."