SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Dr. Scott Rocklage, President & CEO
of Cubist Pharmaceuticals, Inc., will be presenting at the 18th Annual Chase
H&Q Healthcare Conference at 3:00 PM on Wednesday, January 12. Dr. Rocklage
joined Cubist in 1994 from Nycomed Salutar, Inc. where he was President & CEO.
He received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of California at
Berkeley and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.
Cubist is a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on the discovery,
development and commercialization of novel antinfectives to treat infections
caused by bacterial and fungal pathogens. Daptomycin, the Company's lead
product, is a unique agent with potent bactericidal activity that addresses
the critical need for new antibiotics to treat life-threatening infections.
The Company is conducting Phase II and III clinical trials for intravenous
daptomycin, an antibiotic with rapid bactericidal activity and in vitro
effectiveness against all clinically relevant gram-positive bacterial strains,
including drug resistant strains. Daptomycin has a favorable side effect
profile and is administered as once-a-day therapy.
Daptomycin is being developed to treat serious and life-threatening
infections in hospitalized patients. Phase III EDGE(TM) (Evaluation of
Daptomycin against Gram-positive Entities) clinical trials for treatment of
complicated skin & soft tissue infections and Phase II clinical trials for
bacteremia began in second quarter 1999. In 2000, the Company plans to
evaluate daptomycin for indications such as urinary tract infections and
endocarditis.
Cubist is applying its VITA(TM) (Validation In vivo of Target for
Antiinfectives) technology to validate unique targets and to build assays to
identify additional novel compounds with a broad spectrum of activity against
serious infectious organisms such as methicillin resistant Staphyloccocus
aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin resistant enterococci (VRE). Cubist's
ChemInformatics technology uniquely captures information contained in high-
throughput screening data sets to generate new pharmacophores with enhanced
biological activity.
Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck & Co., Inc., and Novartis AG collaborate with
Cubist to accelerate the discovery, development and commercialization of novel
antinfective products. These partnerships provide support to Cubist in the
form of license fees, equity investments, R&D funding and scientific and
product development milestone payments.
Both the Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb partnerships have been advanced to
the medicinal chemistry phase with resources allocated by these companies to
the programs. In February 1999, Cubist and Novartis established a target
validation and assay development research collaboration. Novartis was granted
a non-exclusive license to the VITA(TM) technology and an exclusive license to
specific targets, assays and compounds.
SOURCE Cubist Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
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Company News On-Call:
http://www.prnewswire.com/comp/119304.html or fax,
800-758-5804, ext. 119304
CONTACT:
Dr. Scott Rocklage of Cubist, 617-576-4150
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