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(July 20, 2009 - EPIX Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced today that, in light of the company's lack of capital and inability to obtain additional financing or consummate a strategic transaction, it has entered into an Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors, effective immediately, in accordance with Massachusetts law).
EPIX has been a specialty pharmaceutical firm developing targeted contrast agents to improve the capability of MRI as a diagnostic tool for a variety of diseases. Gadofosveset trisodium (formerly MS-325, Vasovist™, now ABLAVARt™), is an injectable intravascular contrast agents designed for multiple vascular imaging applications, including peripheral vascular disease and coronary artery disease. EPIX conducted a pivotal Phase III trial for the detection of peripheral vascular disease, as well as a Phase II feasibility trial for coronary artery disease diagnosis.
To ensure rapid development and adoption of gadofosveset trisodium into clinical practice upon regulatory approval, EPIX pursued an aggressive product development plan and commercialization strategy. The Company established an exclusive, worldwide sales and marketing agreement with Bayer Schering Pharma AG. EPIX also established corporate collaborations with GE Healthcare, Philips Medical Systems and Siemens Medical Systems, the three leading MRI manufacturers, which together account for approximately 80 percent of the MRI machines installed worldwide.
EPIX had other MRI contrast agents under development, most significantly a novel prototype blood clot agent (EP-2104R). Potential clinical applications for this type of agent include detection of deep venous thrombosis, pulmonary embolism and blood clots in the coronary and carotid arteries. Currently, there is no high resolution imaging technique to directly visualize blood clots in patients with suspected cardiovascular disease.

ABLAVAR™ (formerly named Vasovist™) is a blood pool agent for magnetic resonance angiography (MRA), which opens new medical imaging possibilities in the evaluation of aortoiliac occlusive disease (AIOD) in patients with suspected peripheral vascular disease.
ABLAVAR™ binds reversibly to blood albumin, providing imaging with high spatial resolution up to 1 hour after injection, due to its high relaxivity and to the long lasting increased signal intensity of blood.
As with other contrast media: the possibility of serious or life-threatening anaphylactic or anaphylactoid reactions, including cardiovascular, respiratory and/or cutaneous manifestations, should always be considered.

WARNING:
NEPHROGENIC SYSTEMIC FIBROSIS Gadolinium-based contrast agents increase the risk for nephrogenic systemic fibrosis (NSF) in patients with acute or chronic severe renal insufficiency (glomerular filtration rate less than 30 mL/min/1.73m²), or acute renal insufficiency of any severity due to the hepato-renal syndrome or in the perioperative liver transplantation period.

See also Cardiovascular Imaging, Adverse Reaction, Molecular Imaging, and MRI Safety.

Short name: Code 7228, generic name: Ferumoxytol, central moiety: Fe
Code 7228 is the code name for a substance in the development pipeline (AMAG Pharmaceuticals, Inc.) for use as a contrast agent in magnetic resonance angiography (MRA). Ferumoxytol, as a true blood pool agent, resides in the vascular space for an extended period of time and does not leak out into adjacent tissues like currently used gadolinium-based contrast agents. The product is being evaluated in MRA applications for the detection of blood flow in the heart muscle, in exploratory studies for the diagnosis of vulnerable plaque and as a next generation lymph node agent.
Code 7228 is currently in approval phase for use as an iron replacement therapeutic in chronic kidney disease patients receiving erythropoetin.
It is presently contemplated that Ferumoxytol will compete with the contrast agents Vasovist™ from EPIX Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and NC100150 Injection from Nycomed Amersham.

EP-2104R is a molecularly targeted MRI contrast agent for high resolution blood clot imaging within half an hour of injection. This gadolinium based small peptide has high affinity and specificity for human fibrin.
The thrombus agent is a new class of contrast medium for the diagnostic of, e.g. deep venous thrombosis, carotid artery blood clots, coronary artery blood clots and pulmonary embolism. Fibrin is an excellent target for a molecular imaging contrast agent, since it is present in arterial and venous clots at high concentrations (20-100 μM), and is a target for fibrinolytic therapy.
Due to financial problems, the developer EPIX Pharmaceuticals, Inc. had to shut down all operations. As a consequence, the development of EP-2104R is discontinued.

MS-325 is the formerly code name of gadofosveset trisodium (new trade name Vasovist). MS-325 belongs to a new class of blood pool agents for magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) to diagnose vascular disease. Gadofosveset trisodium has ten times the signal-enhancing power of existing contrast agents as well as prolonged retention in the blood. This enables the rapid acquisition of high resolution MRA's using standard MRI machines.
Gadofosveset trisodium, which is gadolinium-based, stays in the blood stream as a result of transient binding to albumin. Albumin binding offers an additional benefit beyond localization in the blood pool. The contrast agent begins to spin much more slowly, at the rate albumin spins, causing a relaxivity gain that produces a substantially brighter signal than would be possible with freely circulating gadolinium. MS-325 is an intravascular contrast agent intended for use in MRI as an aid in diagnosing aortoiliac occlusive disease in patients with known or suspected peripheral vascular disease (PVD) or abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA).
Currently clinical trials completed for peripheral vascular disease and coronary artery disease. Additional trials are also being conducted to evaluate MS-325 as an aid in diagnosing breast cancer and suggested that it might be feasible to combine the use of MS-325, injected during peak stress, with delayed high-resolution imaging to identify myocardial perfusion defects.
Vasovist (MS-325) would compete with the contrast agents Ferumoxytol (Code 7228) from AMAG Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and NC100150 Injection from Nycomed Amersham, but their further development is uncertain.
Partners in development: EPIX Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Mallinckrodt Inc., and Bayer Schering Pharma AG. Bayer Schering Pharma has the worldwide marketing rights for the product.
Formerly known under the Mallinckrodt trademark name, AngioMARK®.

See also Classifications, Characteristics, etc.