Martinsried/Munich, April 28, 2005
MorphoSys AG (Frankfurt: MOR; Prime Standard Segment, TecDAX) today provided an update on its MOR102 antibody program for chronic inflammatory diseases. As part of this program MorphoSys commissioned a pre-clinical study to compare the effectiveness of MOR102 with that of the approved biologics Amevive® and Raptiva® in an animal model of psoriasis. This study has now been completed and the results have been analyzed. Although therapeutic effects were observed for all tested compounds in several psoriatic skin samples, the in depth-analysis showed that it is not possible to discriminate on a statistically valid basis between compound-mediated effects and spontaneous healing observed in the negative control group. Hence, this study did not enable conclusions to be drawn regarding the efficacy of MOR102 versus Amevive® or Raptiva®. The Company announced that it would continue to pursue the development and commercialization of MOR102 in chronic inflammation.In an earlier study, MOR102, a HuCAL®-derived fully human IgG4 antibody against ICAM-1, showed clear evidence of efficacy in the same model. The model used diseased skin samples obtained from psoriasis patients grafted onto immunodeficient SCID mice. Subsequently, mice underwent systemic treatment with the compounds to be investigated in comparison to one group of mice receiving placebo as a negative control. This study, which will be published shortly in a peer-reviewed journal, showed that MOR102 successfully improved psoriatic symptoms by 40% as measured by epidermal thickness as well as by histopathological profiling of the skin grafts. In this earlier study none of the skin grafts showed a spontaneously healed phenotype, which was clearly different compared to the study reported today. Unfortunately, there is no clear explanation for the difference between the two studies rather than variability between skin grafts originating from different patients.
“While this study does not help us in assessing the potential of MOR102 against the existing psoriasis drugs Amevive® and Raptiva®, we remain convinced by the results of the earlier study that MOR102 may be developed successfully in chronic inflammation”, commented Dr. Simon Moroney, Chief Executive Officer of MorphoSys AG. “We are committed to extracting as much value as possible from our portfolio of proprietary drug candidates. Over the coming weeks we will determine how best to proceed with the further development and commercialization of MOR102. We regret the inconclusiveness of the just completed study, but we see no reason at this stage to give up on this program.”