SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 15, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Velocity Pharmaceutical Development LLC (VPD) today announced the signing of a Licensing Agreement to pursue a drug development program utilizing EuMederis Pharmaceuticals' EuPort^™ technology for optimizing the pharmaceutical properties of peptide drugs.  Research and further development is being funded and carried out through a special purpose development company, Spitfire Pharma, Inc., operating largely in virtual mode. The program will be managed by members of the Velocity Pharmaceutical Development team and by John Nestor, Ph.D., CEO of EuMederis.

Peptide hormones control a host of critical functions throughout the body. Peptide drugs, however, typically have a short duration of action and require self-injection thus limiting their utility. Recent advances in the design, synthesis and delivery of peptides, such as the EuPort^™ technology, have increased interest in this attractive pharmaceutical class.

"The EuMederis model of rapid peptide optimization has quickly provided us with an attractive peptide development candidate and its low-infrastructure organization is consistent with our plan for Velocity Pharmaceutical Development," explained David J. Collier, M.D., CEO of Velocity Pharmaceutical Development LLC.

"We expect that the Velocity model for rapid and focused clinical development programs in relatively flat organizations will find many adherents in the future of biopharmaceutical development," said John Nestor, Ph.D., founding CEO, EuMederis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. "It is a pleasure to be working with such a highly experienced team of drug development experts."

The deal terms and therapeutic target are unannounced at this time.

About Velocity Pharmaceutical Development, LLC

Velocity Pharmaceutical Development (VPD) is a pharmaceutical development organization dedicated to rapidly advancing promising drug candidates to clinical proof of concept using a highly virtual management model.  VPD seeks to acquire promising drug candidates, generally within a year of their entering human clinical trials or after initial human clinical data have been generated.  VPD then manages a highly virtual development program for each drug candidate intended to generate convincing human proof of concept data.   Following successful human proof of concept, VPD then seeks a large pharmaceutical company acquirer for each program.  VPD is staffed by a seasoned team of clinical drug developers with expertise in identifying attractive drug candidates, target markets, and designing and managing outsourced clinical trials. This expert team manages multiple single asset companies to remove the costly overhead and misaligned incentives present in traditional biotechnology company structures. VPD operates on a rapid decision principle, which identifies drug candidates with the greatest promise and repurposes capital from those that don't work out early in the process. VPD believes this new capital-efficient model will yield attractive new drugs to treat patients with significant unmet clinical needs. The company is located in South San Francisco, California.  More information is available at www.vpd.net.

About EuMederis Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

EuMederis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (www.eumederis.com) is a seed-stage biotechnology company focused on the design and development of Best-in-Class peptide therapeutics with optimized pharmaceutical properties. EuMederis' EuPort^™ technology utilizes a proprietary chemical modification to increase the duration of action and bioavailability of peptides, generating optimized new chemical entities. EuMederis is led by John J. Nestor, Jr., Ph.D., who has more than 35 years of experience in peptide hormone design and development, both in major pharmaceutical companies (Syntex, Roche Bioscience) and in San Diego biotech companies (Sequenom, Inc.; TheraPei Pharmaceuticals, Inc.). He is lead inventor of pharmaceuticals marketed by Roche (Valcyte^®), Merck/Organon (Orgalutran^®) and Pfizer/Searle (Synarel^®). The company is located in San Diego, California.

Contact 
Leslie Loven
1-415-524-7326
leslie@vpd.net

SOURCE Velocity Pharmaceutical Development, LLC