Tranzyme Pharma, a leading biopharmaceutical company developing novel mechanism-based therapeutics for the treatment of gastrointestinal (GI) and metabolic disorders, has received a Notice of Allowance from the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for its patent application entitled "Combinatorial Synthesis of Libraries of Macrocyclic Compounds."

The patent protects key aspects of the company's core drug-design platform, Macrocyclic Template Chemistry (MATCH). Tranzyme Pharma has successfully leveraged MATCH to build a diverse library of small molecules that exhibit high potency and selectivity against multiple types of pharmaceutically important targets from which the company has developed its pipeline of first-in-class therapeutics.

"This Notice of Allowance represents a significant milestone for the company as it marks the first issued patent protecting our MATCH technology," stated Dr Vipin K Garg, president and CEO for Tranzyme Pharma.

"The issuance of this patent follows the completion of a Phase I trial for our first clinical product, TZP-101. We are very excited with the significant progress that we have made in demonstrating the ability of our chemistry to produce a pipeline of high-quality drug candidates for internal development. Our strategy is to further leverage this technology in joint drug discovery and development alliances across multiple therapeutic areas," he added.

"We are pleased that the USPTO has recognized the unique aspects of the technology and granted us this initial protection. This is just the first of many patents we expect to have issued for our chemistry platform and for our specific pharmaceutical programs," added Dr Mark L Peterson, vice president of Intellectual Property & Operations for Tranzyme Pharma.

MATCH is a proprietary drug design and medicinal chemistry technology which exploits a distinct compound class, macrocyclic small molecules. Tranzyme has developed the first synthetic library of these macrocyclic small molecules. MATCH has proven to be a particularly rich source for novel drug candidates since it maintains the favourable characteristics exhibited by large biomolecules, such as tight receptor binding for high potency and selectivity, while eliminating the drawbacks typically associated with peptide and protein drugs, i.e. poor metabolic stability, low oral bioavailability, lack of membrane permeability, high manufacturing costs, and antigenicity.

Tranzyme is a clinical-stage company developing small molecule therapeutics for the treatment of gastrointestinal (GI) and metabolic diseases. The company's candidate drugs originate from its own discovery pipeline of proprietary compounds with high potency and selectivity for validated and druggable targets. Tranzyme is developing first-in-class, mechanism-based therapeutics for post-operative ileus (POI), gastroparesis, obesity, diabetes and functional GI disorders.