Company contact: Maria Maccecchini, CEO
QR Pharma, Inc.
484 253 2296
Maccecchini@qrpharma.com
Company contact:
Maria Maccecchini, CEO
QR Pharma, Inc.
484 253 2296
Maccecchini@qrpharma.com
Berwyn, PA, November 7, 2011
Dr. Maria Maccecchini, CEO of QR Pharma, Inc. (QR) has been awarded
the prestigious Iris Newman Women Entrepreneur of the year award. The award will be presented on
November 16 at the annual meeting of The Alliance of Women Entrepreneurs (AWE) where Maria and
Kay Koplovitz are keynote speakers. Details of the event can be found on the AWE website and in the
articles by the Wall Street Journal and by MedCity News.
Maria has devoted her life and 30 year career to the study of neurodegenerative diseases and their possible
treatments. This award follows a year of progress and success for Maria and her company QR. This year
QR obtained very positive results in a Phase I/II study of Posiphen; elucidated the drug’s mechanism of
action for treating the underlying causes associated with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases; received
funding from Bio-Advance as well as Ben Franklin Technology Partners with a total raise of $4 million;
and qualified for major grants from prestigious agencies and foundations.
Maria received her PhD in biochemistry from Rockefeller University and spent two years at Caltech as a
postdoctoral fellow in molecular biology. She took her first job at Mallinckrodt as research scientist and her
second job as general manager of Bachem Bioscience, a US subsidiary of Bachem AG, Switzerland. In the
early 1990s, she started her own biotech company, Symphony Pharmaceuticals. Symphony later changed
its name to Annovis after acquiring a Scottish and a Japanese company. Annovis ultimately developed,
manufactured and marketed a variety of nucleic acid-based products and provided services for businesses
in the life sciences sector. Annovis was acquired by Transgenomic in 2001.
After the sale of her company, Maria fulfilled a life’s ambition to climb Mount Everest and joined two
Philadelphia angel groups – Robin Hood Ventures and Mid-Atlantic Angel Group. As an investor, she
concentrated her investments in the life science sector. Maria serves on several boards of biotechnology
companies and mentors new companies in start up strategy, management, and finance. She is also on the
board of the Salvation Army. In late 2008 Maria started QR Pharma,
About QR Pharma, Inc. Headquartered in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, QR is a clinical-stage specialty
pharmaceutical company committed to developing therapeutics with novel approaches for the treatment of
cognitive impairment, Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD) and Down syndrome (DS). QR
currently has three product development programs - Posiphen for early stage AD and PD and BNC for
advanced AD. QR Pharma started with clinical stage technology licensed from NIH/Torrey Pines.
About Posiphen®, QR's Lead Compound Posiphen® is a small orally active compound with high blood
brain barrier permeability, which is in clinical development for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease and in
early studies for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. It has been successfully tested in over 120 people and
recently completed a phase I/II study that showed that it enters the brain and inhibits the major pathways
leading to cognitive impairment in Alzheimer’s disease. Posiphen reduces the rate of synthesis of amyloid
precursor protein (APP), Tau and á-Synuclein in cell cultures, normal, transgenic and trisomic mice as well
as in mildly cognitively impaired patients (MCI). The data in MCI patient study confirmed that Posiphen's
mechanism of action in humans correlates with the pharmacokinetics of the compound and its metabolites
in CSF and plasma and that Posiphen does not just lower levels of both APP and tau by about 50%, but that
it normalizes them back to the levels found in healthy, normal volunteers.
"APP mutations and duplications cause Familial Alzheimer's disease. APP triplication causes Down
syndrome and high levels of APP after head trauma, stroke and brain injury lead to neurodegeneration,"
said Kumar Sambamurti, PhD, Professor of Neurosciences at the Neurosciences Laboratory at MUSC.
"Posiphen, an APP-lowering compound, targets all the toxic fragments cleaved from APP and therefore
provide benefits beyond those realized by compounds that target Aâ. Posiphen also targets Tau, which
further contributes to the toxicity in Alzheimer’s Disease".
About QR Pharma, Inc. Headquartered in Radnor, Pennsylvania, QR Pharma, Inc. is a clinical-stage specialty pharmaceutical company committed to developing therapeutics with novel approaches for the treatment of cognitive impairment, in diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD) and Down Syndrome (DS). QR currently has two product development programs based on oral small-molecule, blood-brain barrier passable therapeutics that target two distinct pathways for the treatment of AD.www.qrpharma.com
Contact: Maria Maccecchini, CEO
Tel: 610 209 8454
Maccecchini@qrpharma.com
www.qrpharma.com