Follicum Receives Notice of Allowance for FOL-005
31 Jul 2018Industry news
Follicum AB has announced that the U.S. Patent Office (USPTO) issued a Notice of Allowance for their patent application 15/184,290 which is the company’s second, follow-up application which when granted confers expanded protection for Follicum's product candidate FOL-005.
Follicum has already approved a US patent in this patent family, specifically covering FOL-005. Follicum has subsequently submitted a follow-up application, called Continuing Patent Application, which extends the protection around FOL-005. Follicum now has received a Notice of Allowance for this application. Notice of Allowance means that the US patent office, intends to grant the company's patent application after any administrative action by both parties has been implemented. When the patent is granted it can be kept in force until 2032.
CEO Jan Alenfall comments “We are very pleased to receive this Notice of Allowance which is an important step in our global patent strategy. It provides additional commercialization opportunities in the United States which is one of the largest markets for Follicum, and an extended product protection for our drug candidate is thus extremely important.”
FOL-005 is a modified short version of the endogenous protein - osteopontin. In a completed Phase I / IIa study, FOL-005 proved to be an effective and safe treatment. Even after three months of treatment, three out of four responded with increased hair growth. Currently, a Phase IIa study is underway to investigate the safety and efficacy after treatment with different doses of the drug candidate FOL-005 or placebo for three months. In this study, patients receive injections into the scalp three times a week. Patient recruitment was completed in early June 2018 and the study is expected to be finished and top-line data presented at the end of 2018.
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