17th Dec 2007 07:00
VERONA PHARMA PLC ("Verona Pharma" or the "Company") Proposed Placing and Notice of General Meeting
17 December 2007: AIM-quoted Verona Pharma announces its intention to raise ‚£2,319,333, net of expenses, through the issue of 57,983,325 new ordinary shares of 0.1p each in the Company ("New Ordinary Shares") at 4p per share ("Placing"). The Placing is conditional, inter alia, upon the approval of shareholders given in general meeting for the Directors to be able to allot the requisite number of shares and disapply the statutory pre-emption rights of shareholders. A notice convening a general meeting of the Company at 11.00am on 7 January 2008 has been dispatched to shareholders.
The Placing is being made primarily to fund research and pre-clinical development of the Company's recently acquired Cough programme, as well as clinical studies of the Company's anti-asthma and hay fever drug treatment, RPL554, and on-going research and pre-clinical development of the Company's NAIPS anti-inflammatory programme.
Verona Pharma Chairman, Professor Clive Page, commented: "It is particularly pleasing that we have conditionally raised funds to enable the Company to progress the discovery and development of innovative respiratory drug treatments. We believe the Placing brings further stability by increasing our investor base, as well as providing funding to carry us through the critical stages of our drug development programmes."
Verona Pharma is managed and advised by world-recognised experts in respiratory drug development. Among other projects, it is finalising pre-clinical trials on an innovative anti-asthma and hay fever treatment that does not involve steroids - RPL554.
RPL554 was invented by Sir David Jack, the former GlaxoSmithKline Research Director who pioneered many leading respiratory drugs now in use. As well as avoiding steroids, RPL554 is also unique in not using beta agonists, which can cause side effects such as anxiety and tremors.
Verona Pharma has also launched a development programme for a drug to deal with unresolved coughing, and is additionally working to exploit novel polysaccharides as potential anti-inflammatory drugs for the treatment of respiratory allergies, asthma and other inflammatory diseases.
Application will be made for the New Ordinary Shares to be admitted to trading on AIM and it is anticipated that admission will occur on 8 January 2008 ("Admission"). On Admission, the Company will have 204,758,325 shares in issue.
A copy of the circular dispatched to shareholders to convene the general meeting is available on the Company's website, www.veronapharma.com
For further information contact:
Professor Clive Page, Chairman, Verona Pharma plc: 07971 504 931
David Youngman, WH Ireland Ltd: 0161 832 2174
Allan Piper, First City Financial Public Relations: 020 7242 2666
Background information
About Verona Pharma plc
Verona Pharma is an AIM-quoted drug discovery company that is focused on finding new therapeutic drugs for the treatment of rhinitis (hay fever) and other chronic respiratory diseases, such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), as well as chronic inflammatory diseases.
Respiratory diseases are among the most prevalent diseases in the industrialised world, but many of the available treatments have unwanted side effects, and/or limited effectiveness.
The company was admitted to AIM in September 2006, and is run by two of the world experts in pharmacology and drug discovery. Dr Michael Walker is Emeritus Professor of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology and Therapeutics at the University of British Columbia, and a founder of other biotech, and biotech related companies. Chairman Dr Clive Page is a Professor of Pharmacology at King's College London, and an internationally-recognised authority in lung diseases and inflammation.
Verona Pharma currently has three potential drug treatments under development aimed at the respiratory and inflammatory diseases market. The company's lead drug, RPL554, is a long-acting bronchodilator/anti-inflammatory drug (belonging to a class of drugs known as mixed phosphodiesterase (PDE) 3/4 inhibitors) that could be rapidly brought to clinical proof-of-concept for the treatment of hay fever and asthma.
RPL554 was invented by Sir David Jack, the former GlaxoSmithKline Research Director who pioneered many of the leading respiratory drugs already in use. As a PDE3/4 inhibitor, RPL554 targets the underlying cause of respiratory diseases by dilating the bronchial passages and blocking inflammation through a non-steroid or beta agonist receptor.
Verona Pharma's other drug candidate is an anti-tussive drug that works to suppress the generation of a cough signal at the nerve endings in the lungs. Verona Pharma's longer term focus is based on novel polysaccharides (NAIPS) derived from certain marine organisms which the company is planning to tailor through the use of synthetic and analytical chemical techniques to develop an anti-inflammatory drug for the treatment of respiratory allergies, asthma and other inflammatory diseases.
VERONA PHARMA PLCRelated Shares:
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