ABOUT ASTHMA

Asthma is an inflammatory disease of the lower airways characterized by reversible airway obstruction and bronchial hyper-responsiveness. It is one of the most common diseases in industrialized countries affecting approximately 130 million people globally . The USA is the fastest growing asthma market (17% growth per annum projected for 2001-2006 versus 5% for Europe) and it is also the largest (48% of the total asthma market versus 33% for Europe). There were 17 million diagnosed asthma sufferers in the USA in 2001.

ABOUT TPI ASM8

Topigen has an innovative scientific strategy for developing effective therapeutic products for the treatment of asthma. Shutting down only one mediator or one arm of the response is ineffective in controlling asthma. Topigen's multitargeted compound, TPI ASM8, targets at least eight different components and effectively blocks two major arms of the inflammation response, thus effectively shutting down the most important components of the response. TPI ASM8 targets common sequences shared by the cellular receptors for the inflammatory mediators IL-3, IL-5, RANTES, GM-CSF, eotaxins 1,2,3, and MCP-3 and 4. TPI ASM8 works by shutting off the synthesis of these receptors and blocking the effects of all the above mediators.

Other likely advantages of TPI ASM8 over existing asthma medications are:

• high specificity of action focused on turning off multifactorial events that are over expressed during the inflammation process;
• minimal side effects;
• high stability of drug in the lung (several days), thus limiting dosing to at most once per day;
• cost competitive.