ROCKVILLE, Md., April 5, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Nabi Biopharmaceuticals (Nasdaq:NABI) announced today that the European Patent Office (EPO) upheld the Company's opposition to European Patent No. 1,329,226 (Hapten Carrier Conjugates for Use in Drug Abuse Therapy) requesting revocation of this patent. The EPO revoked this patent in its entirety.
The patent was filed by Xenova Research Limited, which was subsequently acquired by Celtic Pharma in 2005. On February 15, 2008, Nabi, along with four other parties, filed an opposition against this patent, requesting revocation of the Xenova patent in its entirety. As a result of this EPO decision, Celtic Pharma has lost its exclusive patent rights to nicotine conjugate vaccine technology in Europe. Xenova Research Limited, still named as the proprietor of the patent, has the opportunity to file a Notice of Appeal within a period of two months from the March 29, 2010 date of the EPO written decision.
About Nabi Biopharmaceuticals
Nabi Biopharmaceuticals leverages its experience and knowledge in powering the immune system to develop products that target serious medical conditions in the areas of nicotine addiction and gram-positive bacterial infections. Nabi Biopharmaceuticals is currently developing NicVAX® (Nicotine Conjugate Vaccine), an innovative and proprietary investigational vaccine for treatment of nicotine addiction and prevention of smoking relapse. The company is headquartered in Rockville, Maryland. For additional information about Nabi Biopharmaceuticals, please visit www.nabi.com
Forward-Looking Statements
Statements in this release that are not strictly historical are forward-looking statements and include statements about products in development, results and analyses of clinical trials and studies, research and development expenses, cash expenditures, licensure applications and approvals, and alliances and partnerships, among other matters. You can identify these forward-looking statements because they involve our expectations, intentions, beliefs, plans, projections, anticipations, or other characterizations of future events or circumstances. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of any number of factors. These factors include, but are not limited to, risks relating to our ability to conduct and obtain successful results from our two Phase III clinical trials for NicVAX; GSK's failure to exercise its option for and successfully commercialize NicVAX; GSK's failure to successfully develop and commercialize any future generation candidate nicotine vaccine; our ability to commercialize NicVAX if GSK does not exercise its option for NicVAX; our ability to raise sufficient new capital resources to fully develop and commercialize NicVAX if GSK does not exercise the NicVAX option; our ability to attract, retain and motivate key employees; our ability to collect any further milestones and royalty payments under the PhosLo and PentaStaph agreements; the ability to obtain regulatory approval for NicVAX and any future generation candidate nicotine vaccine in the U.S. or other markets; our ability to successfully contract with contract manufacturing organizations for the manufacture and supply of NicVAX; our ability to comply with reporting and payment obligations under government rebate and pricing programs; and loss of full use of our net operating loss carry forwards. These factors are more fully discussed, as are other factors, in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 26, 2009 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.