Melior Discovery company fact sheet

Melior is Pioneering High Throughput Pharmacology as a Uniquely Productive Drug Discovery Strategy
Many blockbuster drugs were only serendipitously discovered to be efficacious in the indications where they were ultimately marketed. For example, Viagra® ($2 billion per year), Gemzar® ($1.2 billion per year), Evista® ($1.0 billion per year) and Propecia® are all examples of drugs that were originally developed for one therapy but, by chance, were discovered to be effective for a very different condition.
Melior Discovery has developed an optimized, high throughput pharmacology platform that is able to systematically identify novel indications for small molecule drug candidates. Melior’s theraTRACE® system utilizes an initial substrate comprising low molecular weight, orally bioavailable, drug-like small molecules that may also have been shown to be previously well tolerated in pre-clinical or human clinical studies. More than 52 validated and highly predictive in vivo disease models assembled in a proprietary “multiplexed” format facilitate a comprehensive evaluation of potential novel therapeutic applications. Melior’s high throughput pharmacology approach is purely empirical and does not rely on a priori hypotheses relating to molecular target or putative mechanism of action.

Melior’s theraTRACE® Platform
Melior Discovery has developed the theraTRACE® indications discovery platform of multiplexed in vivo disease models to uncover new indications for existing pharmaceutical compounds. theraTRACE® combines up to 52 in vivo models in a way that allows scientists to test a molecule for its potential efficacy across a broad array of therapeutic areas. These disease models are run with full consideration of key in vivo pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic parameters of test compounds.
Melior's pharmacology expertise comprises more than 30 years of experience with in vivo pharmacology. Leveraging this knowledge, Melior has created its theraTRACE® platform for systematically testing a compound's efficacy across a large number of high quality disease models. theraTRACE® achieves this with tremendous efficiency with respect to time, test compound and number of test subjects.

Melior’s Indications Discovery Approach Has Proven to be Highly Effective Building Advanced Drug Pipelines
In the three years since Melior’s inception our efforts to develop an internal pipeline using the theraTRACE platform have resulted in four clinical candidates indentified from just twelve compounds initially screened. All of these compounds have previously been shown to be safe in mid to late stage human clinical trials, although lacking efficacy in the original indication. As such, these compounds now represent near-term, de-risked and highly valued drug development opportunities for the company. Our lead candidate, MLR-1023, has been successfully repositioned for type II diabetes; MLR-1045 is our clinical candidate for irritable bowel syndrome while MLR-1130 and MLR-1326 are now being developed for atopic dermatitis and diabetes indications respectively.

Melior’s unprecedented success in identifying novel indications for small molecule drug candidates has attracted the interest of major international pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Merck and Co and Cephalon. Our partnerships with these companies include multi-year, multi-compound collaborations and significant corporate licensing transactions.

Key Company Facts

Headquarters:
Exton, Pennsylvania, USA

President and CEO:
Andrew G. Reaume, PhD, MBA

Current Partners:
Pfizer Inc., Merck and Co., Inc., Johnson and Johnson, Immune Control Inc., Cephalon Inc., PolyMedix Inc., High Q Foundation, Inc.

For additional information, contact:
Andrew G. Reaume
President and CEO, Co-Founder
(610) 280-0633

Michele Borek
Director of Business Development
(610) 280-0633

For additional information contact us.

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