Milestone payment triggered by successful completion of a pre-submission meeting with the FDA
AIT has received $10.5 million to date in upfront and milestone payments
PMA submission on track for the second quarter of 2019
GARDEN CITY, N.Y. and REHOVOT, Israel, Feb. 04, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AIT Therapeutics, Inc. (OTCQB: AITB), a clinical-stage medical device and biopharmaceutical company focused on developing inhaled nitric oxide (NO) for the treatment of patients with respiratory conditions including serious lung infections and pulmonary hypertension, today announced it has received a milestone payment of $3.15 million from its commercialization partner Circassia Pharmaceuticals for the successful completion of the pre-submission meeting with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This pre-submission meeting satisfied the conditions of the recently announced commercial licensing agreement. Circassia Pharmaceuticals has licensed the commercial rights for AIT’s novel cylinder-free nitric oxide (NO) generator and phasic-flow delivery system (AirNOvent*) in the United States and China for use in the hospital setting at NO concentrations < 80 ppm. In addition to this milestone payment, AIT received an upfront payment of $7.35 million upon signing of the licensing agreement on January 24, 2019, bringing the total payments received to $10.5 million.
“We are very excited about our recently signed commercial licensing agreement with Circassia,” said Steve Lisi, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AIT. “Receipt of this milestone payment is another example of AIT’s ability to execute. We remain on track to make our PMA submission to the FDA in the second quarter of 2019 and anticipate a US launch in the first half of 2020.”
About NO
Nitric oxide (NO) is a crucially important molecule proven to play a critical role in a broad array of biological functions. Inhaled nitric oxide is currently approved for treating term and near-term neonates with Persistent Pulmonary Hypertension of the Newborn (PPHN) in the United States of America and most major markets. In Europe, Japan and Australia, inhaled NO is approved to treat PPHN as well as pulmonary hypertension during the peri-operative cardiac surgery period in neonates, children, and adults. In the airways, NO is believed to play a key role in the innate immune system at concentrations of approximately 200 ppm. In vitro studies suggest that NO possesses anti-microbial activity not only against common bacteria, both gram-positive and gram-negative, but also against other diverse organisms including mycobacteria, fungi, yeast and parasites, and has the potential to eliminate their multi-drug resistant strains.
About PPHN
Persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn (PPHN) is a life-threatening condition secondary to failure of normal circulatory transition at birth. It is a syndrome characterized by elevated pulmonary vascular resistance (PVR) that causes labile hypoxemia due to decreased pulmonary blood flow and right-to-left shunting of blood. Its incidence has been reported as 1.9 per 1000 live births (0.4–6.8/1000 live births) with mortality rate ranging between 4–33%. This syndrome complicates the course of about 10% of infants with respiratory failure and remains a source of considerable morbidity and mortality. NO gas is a pulmonary vasodilator and is approved in dozens of countries to improve oxygenation and reduce the need for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) in term and near-term (>34 weeks gestation) neonates with hypoxic respiratory failure associated with clinical or echocardiographic evidence of pulmonary hypertension in conjunction with ventilator support and other appropriate agents.
About AirNOvent*
AIT’s ventilator-compatible NO Generator and Delivery System is a cylinder-free, phasic flow nitric oxide delivery system and has been designated as a medical device by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The device can generate NO on demand for delivery to the lungs at concentrations ranging from 1 part per million (ppm) to 80 ppm. The elimination of the need for large, high-pressure cylinders for NO is a significant advantage in the hospital setting by greatly reducing inventory and storage requirements and improving overall safety with the elimination of NO2 purging steps, among other benefits.
*AirNOvent is not an approved name for the product and may not be the final name submitted for approval.
About AIT
AIT Therapeutics Inc. is a clinical-stage medical device and biopharmaceutical company using nitric oxide (NO) to treat respiratory and other diseases. The Company is currently applying its therapeutic expertise to treat lower respiratory tract infections that are not effectively addressed with current standards of care, as well as pulmonary hypertension, in various settings. AIT Therapeutics is currently advancing its revolutionary NO Generator and Delivery System in clinical trials for the treatment of bronchiolitis and nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM). For more information, visit www.AIT-Pharm.com.
Forward-Looking Statement
This press release contains “forward-looking statements.” Forward-looking statements include statements about our expectations, beliefs, or intentions regarding our product offerings, business, financial condition, results of operations, strategies or prospects. You can identify such forward-looking statements by the words “expects,” “intends,” “plans,” “projects,” “believes,” “estimates,” “likely,” “goal,” “assumes,” “targets” and similar expressions and/or the use of future tense or conditional constructions (such as “will,” “may,” “could,” “should” and the like) and by the fact that these statements do not relate strictly to historical or current matters. Rather, forward-looking statements relate to anticipated or expected events, activities, trends or results as of the date they are made. Because forward-looking statements relate to matters that have not yet occurred, these statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from any future results expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are only predictions and reflect our views as of the date they are made with respect to future events and financial performance. Many factors could cause our actual activities or results to differ materially from the activities and results anticipated in forward-looking statements, including risks related to: our approach to discover and develop novel drugs, which is unproven and may never lead to marketable products; our ability to fund and the results of further pre-clinical and clinical trials; obtaining, maintaining and protecting intellectual property utilized by our products; our ability to enforce our patents against infringers and to defend our patent portfolio against challenges from third parties; our ability to obtain additional funding to support our business activities; our dependence on third parties for development, manufacture, marketing, sales, and distribution of products; the successful development of our product candidates, all of which are in early stages of development; obtaining regulatory approval for products; competition from others using technology similar to ours and others developing products for similar uses; our dependence on collaborators; and our short operating history. We undertake no obligation to update, and we do not have a policy of updating or revising, these forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable law.
CONTACT
Steven Lisi, Chief Executive Officer
AIT Therapeutics, Inc.
Steve@AIT-Pharm.com
Bob Yedid
LifeSci Advisors, LLC
Bob@LifeSciAdvisors.com
(646) 597-6989