Cequent Pharmaceuticals to provide details of its clinical program at BIOCOM conference

Cequent Pharmaceuticals, a pioneer in the development of novel products to deliver RNAi-based treatments to prevent and treat human disease, announced that Chief Executive Officer, Peter Parker, will provide details on Cequent's planned launch of its clinical program and highlight strategy and development goals in a company update scheduled for 3 p.m. on Tuesday, October 27, 2009, at the 2009 BIOCOM Investor Conference. The company has initiated a Series B round of financing; it is seeking to raise $15 million to take the company through Phase II clinical trials with its lead drug candidate.

Cequent is using the company's proprietary TransKingdom RNA interference (tkRNAi) technology to develop RNAi-based therapeutics - a new class of drugs designed to work by effectively deactivating the specific gene or genes implicated in the progression of a disease. The company has made considerable progress with its programs targeting polyposis and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), demonstrating through in vivo testing and studies with non-human primates that its tkRNAi technology can silence target genes successfully. It expects to file its first IND (investigational new drug) application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for an orally administered tkRNAi drug targeting the primary oncogene in FAP (familial adenomatous polyposis) before the end of the quarter. FAP is a rare inherited gastrointestinal disease that causes hundreds to thousands of precancerous polyps to form in the colon, leading to colon cancer.