SEEK: PepTcell Changes Name due to New Focus and Success

LONDON, December 1, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- PepTcell, a leading UK privately-owned drug-discovery group, today announced it is changing its name to SEEK.

Gregory Stoloff, Chief Executive Officer, explains: "SEEK has a significant number of potential blockbuster assets in different legal entities and we wanted to give them a common identity and purpose. Announcing a simple and uniting group brand name, SEEK, reflects our efforts to 'seek a cure' in a number of major disease areas."

SEEK has a leading innovative mid-to-late stage portfolio of breakthrough treatments. Entering Phase III trials are a first-in-class cough suppressant, with a clinically-proven efficacy and safety profile, and a small-molecule drug for inflammatory flare, with a clinically-proven safety analgesic profile. In the area of vaccination, SEEK has made significant progress with a universal flu vaccine - intended to be effective against all strains of flu virus, eliminating the need for annual flu vaccinations - and an HIV vaccine, both completing Phase Ib/II clinical trials.

The name change is effective as of 1st December 2010. In parallel with this name change, SEEK has launched a new corporate website: http://www.seekacure.com.

SEEK - A growing and diversifying company

SEEK began life in 2004 as an immunology company, quickly establishing a new vaccine-technology platform with a focus on peptide-based T cell vaccines (based on a novel understanding of the molecular level interactions between immune cells). Lead products under this platform are a Universal Flu and an HIV vaccine, with Phase Ib/II clinical trial data due early and mid-2011. Vaccines for mosquito-transported and chagas diseases are in the pre-clinical phase, with Hepatitis B & C and rotavirus vaccines in research.

Recent acquisitions have also provided the group with chemical biology and target-identification expertise. Coupling these competencies with SEEK's immunology and regulatory knowledge, has resulted in two drugs entering Phase III clinical trials; one for the treatment of persistent cough and the second for the treatment of pain, inflammation and auto-immune diseases.

Stoloff says: "With our expanding therapeutic focus and continued successful growth, we felt that now was the time to reposition the group to ensure our investors, collaborators and partners understand our long term goals and how we are working to achieve them. "

About SEEK

Founded in 2004, SEEK - previously known as PepTcell - is privately-owned and funded, with headquarters in London, UK. Using a pioneering scientific and commercially-driven approach, SEEK aims to create breakthrough medicines which address major diseases in order to radically improve human health. SEEK's strategy is to take promising molecules through the challenging stages of discovery to late-stage human proof-of-principle and then to seek partners to take the molecules through the final stages of development and ultimately commercialisation. SEEK's current product-development areas are vaccines, inflammation/autoimmune diseases, transplantation tolerance induction, respiratory diseases, cancer and diabetes/obesity.

    For more information about SEEK please contact:

    SEEK
    Gregory Stoloff, Chief Executive Officer Tel +44(0)20-7153-6570

    M: Communications
    Mary-Jane Elliott / Nick Francis / Amber Bielecka Tel +44(0)20-7920-2330

SOURCE SEEK