Dortmund, Germany, August 5, 2008 – InterMed Discovery GmbH, an emerging world class natural product lead-discovery company, today announced that it has established proof-of-principle in a pre-clinical study for its optimized lead compound IMD-026260, an anti-cancer drug candidate.

IMD-026260 is a fully synthetic small molecule derived from a natural product lead compound. The optimized lead displays an outstanding cytotoxic potential and exhibits a long half-life. IMD-026260 appears to be an inhibitor of Hypoxia-inducible factor 1 (Hif-1) dependent transcriptional activity. Hif-1 activates the transcription of genes that are involved in crucial aspects of cancer biology, including angiogenesis, glucose metabolism, cell survival, and invasiveness.

IMD-026260 initially demonstrated very high in vitro efficacy in a broad panel of tumor cell monolayer assays as well as in colony forming assays. From these tests, high scores of tumor selectivity were observed towards a variety of cancer cell lines derived from human prostate, lung, colon and uterus tumors. Subsequently, xenograft studies proved potent in vivo efficacy at single-digit mg/kg dosage levels.

“Based on the high cytotoxic potential and innovative mechanism of action, IMD-026260 is a promising drug candidate not only for the treatment of lung, breast, prostate, colon and uterine cancers, but also for the treatment of metastases,” said Bernard Becker, Managing Director of InterMed Discovery.

The above-mentioned studies were completed in collaboration with Oncotest GmbH in Freiburg, headed by Professor Heinz-Herbert Fiebig.

About InterMed Discovery
InterMed Discovery is an emerging world class natural product lead-discovery company, driving innovation through the generation of novel product candidates for the life science, food and cosmetics industries. Using one of the most powerful validated natural product discovery engines, InterMed Discovery generates proprietary product pipelines of early stage pharmaceuticals and functional ingredients and also supports partners in research and lead generation. Biologically characterised product leads are identified using IMD BIOPROFILING™ and NPSilico™, which together comprise a proprietary bioinformatics platform drawing on screening results compiled over many years, complemented by primary biological and chemical research on natural products. InterMed Discovery adds to this the industry’s largest collections of pure compounds, sample fractions and mixtures as its source for potential natural product leads. The Company is located in Dortmund, Germany and was founded in 2006 as a management buyout of the Natural Products Research Unit of Bayer Healthcare. Further information on InterMed Discovery can be found at www.intermed-discovery.com.