Verseon to present anticoagulants at ACS 2017

Press release March 30, 2017

Verseon Corporation

("Verseon" or the "Company")

Unique mechanism of action of Verseon's novel class of anticoagulantsto be presented at American Chemical Society meeting

Novel pharmacology may lead to safer anticoagulants

Fremont, Calif.-Verseon scientists will present research on the Company's novel class of oral anticoagulants at the 253rd American Chemical Society National Meeting in San Francisco on April 2, 2017. The two posters will cover experiments showing that Verseon's direct thrombin inhibitors act through reversible covalent inhibition and how this leads to novel pharmacology. In preclinical testing, these inhibitors exhibit strong efficacy without disruption of platelet function, resulting in substantially reduced bleeding.

Verseon's anticoagulants potently inhibit fibrinogen cleavage, thrombin generation, and the activation of other endogenous substrates of thrombin. However, due to their novel mechanism of action, they are substantially weaker inhibitors of thrombin-mediated platelet activation than the NOACs and therefore do not disrupt platelet function. As a consequence, the Verseon inhibitors show significantly reduced bleeding in preclinical testing, while in vivo models of thrombosis indicate that they prevent clot formation with efficacy comparable to current anticoagulants.

 "Our class of direct thrombin inhibitors act through a distinctive mechanism that results in their remarkable pharmacology and reduced bleeding," said Dr. Kevin Short, Director, Discovery Planning.

Details of the posters, to be revealed at the American Chemical Society conference, are as follows:

Poster title: Direct thrombin inhibitors with a novel, reversible, covalent mechanism of action

Poster number: MEDI 194

Session name: Division of Medicinal Chemistry, General Posters

Date and Time: Sunday, April 2, 2017; eve

Poster title: Novel, highly selective direct thrombin inhibitors: In vivo studies demonstrate efficacy with lower bleeding risk

Poster number: MEDI 272

Session name: Division of Medicinal Chemistry, General Posters

Date and Time: Sunday, April 2, 2017; eve

About Verseon's anticoagulation program

Verseon's potent, highly selective, oral direct thrombin inhibitors act through reversible covalent inhibition, a unique mode of action. Preclinical studies show that Verseon's inhibitors act as effective anticoagulants in multiple efficacy studies, but do not disrupt platelet function. This unique feature could explain their observed low bleeding risk. One of Verseon's lead candidates furthermore shows very low renal clearance, a highly desirable property for patients with impaired renal function.

About Verseon

Verseon Corporation (www.verseon.com, AIM: VSN) is a technology-based pharmaceutical company that employs its proprietary, computational drug discovery platform to develop novel therapeutics that are unlikely to be found using conventional methods. The Company is applying its platform to a growing drug pipeline and currently has three active drug programs in the areas of anticoagulation, diabetic macular edema, and oncology.

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