Arrien Pharmaceuticals Appoints Dr. Philip LoGrasso to its Scientific Advisory Board for CNS/Neurodegenerative Diseases

ANSONIA, Conn., Oct. 20, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Arrien Pharmaceuticals is an early stage Drug Discovery company located in the Connecticut & Salt Lake City area announces today the appointment of Philip LoGrasso, Ph.D., to its Scientific Advisory Board. Dr. LoGrasso will work with the Arrien Pharmaceuticals team to facilitate the development of its CNS/Neurodegenerative pipeline portfolio.

"It is a great opportunity to participate in developing Arrien's promising small molecule therapeutics pipeline," said Dr. LoGrasso. "I look forward to assisting in the development of Arrien's innovative therapeutics pipeline for Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and other CNS diseases as a member of the Scientific Advisory Board."

"Dr. LoGrasso's enormous experience in developing novel therapeutics in to the clinic, as well as his strong research interests in molecular neuroscience, will be a valuable scientific addition to Arrien," stated Hariprasad, Ph.D., and Rajendra P. Appalaneni Chief Executive Officer of Arrien Pharmaceuticals. "As a leader in the field of CNS/Neurodegenerative therapeutics, Dr. LoGrasso will contribute valuable science and expertise as we move our ORS-1006 programs forward into IND enabling studies and to the clinical development."

Dr. LoGrasso is a Professor in the Molecular Therapeutics Department and Senior Director of Drug Discovery in the Translational Research Institute within The Scripps Research Institute. Prior to joining Scripps Florida, Dr. LoGrasso was a Program Officer at the NIH and had responsibility for funding a $50MM research portfolio of grants in the areas of chemical biology, medicinal chemistry, pharmacology, and postdoctoral and graduate training fellowships.

In his most recent industrial position Dr. LoGrasso was the Director of preclinical research and development at Avera Pharmaceuticals. In this role he placed two compounds into Phase II clinical development for depression and cognitive impairment.

Dr. LoGrasso was a Research Fellow at Merck Research Laboratories for nearly nine years working in the areas of inflammation and molecular neuroscience. His main research focus was on MAP-kinase signal transduction pathways and associated mechanistic enzymology, inhibitor characterization, and structure-function relationships for MAP kinases.

Dr. LoGrasso received his B.A. in chemistry from New York University in 1985, his M.S. in biochemistry from Florida State University in 1988, and his Ph.D. in pharmacology from the University of Florida in 1992. This was followed by postdoctoral training at the Sandoz Research Institute (now Novartis) working in the area of atherosclerosis and metabolic disease focusing on enzymes in the cholesterol biosynthetic pathway.

Arrien Pharmaceuticals is working for a possible licensing & alliance deals for near term funding for Phase I, II trials and to expand significantly to its value based pipeline. Arrien is seeking collaborations with companies for a number of programs particularly ORS-1006 targeting LRRK2 mediated Parkinson's disease and other CNS indications.

About Arrien Pharmaceuticals & FFDD™

Arrien Pharmaceuticals LLC is a small molecule targeted therapeutics drug discovery and development company working towards targeting cell signaling pathways - A target class in treating Neurodegenerative/CNS, Cancer, Inflammation and Metabolic diseases. Arrien proprietary Fragment-Field Drug Design (FFDD™) Technology typically involves scaffold-based design strategy; extensively implemented by utilizing structural biology data inputs and to assist Medicinal Chemistry in early phase of lead-to-drug-lead identification process. Arrien cost-competent approach assists its technology to influence target-specific leads for multiple protein targets. Moreover, Arrien technology has proven in the identification of potent and highly selective clinical stage candidates.

For further information on Arrien Pharmaceuticals, please visit the company's website www.arrienpharma.com

CONTACT:

Arrien Pharmaceuticals CEO/CSO at [email protected] Tel. 203-331-3000 or 801-285-7427

SOURCE Arrien Pharmaceuticals LLC