Annual report pursuant to Section 13 and 15(d)

Organization and Description of the Business

v3.19.3.a.u2
Organization and Description of the Business
12 Months Ended
Dec. 31, 2019
Organization, Consolidation and Presentation of Financial Statements [Abstract]  
Organization and Description of the Business

Note 1 – Organization and Description of the Business

 

Processa Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (“Processa” or “the Company”) is an emerging clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of drug products that are intended to provide treatment for and improve the survival and/or quality of life of patients who have a high unmet medical need condition or who have no alternative treatment. Within this group of pharmaceutical products, we currently are developing one product for multiple indications (i.e., the use of a drug to treat a particular disease), will begin developing a newly acquired drug once adequate funding has been obtained, and are searching for additional products for our portfolio.

 

Our lead product, PCS499 is an oral tablet that is a deuterated analog of the major metabolites of pentoxifylline (Trental®). The advantage of PCS499 is that it potentially may work in many conditions because it has multiple pharmacological targets it affects that are important in the treatment of these conditions. Based on its pharmacological activity, we have identified multiple unmet medical need conditions where the use of PCS499 may result in clinical efficacy. The lead indication currently under development for PCS499 is Necrobiosis Lipoidica (NL). NL is a chronic, disfiguring condition affecting the skin and the tissue under the skin typically on the lower extremities with no currently approved FDA treatments. NL presents more commonly in women than in men and ulceration can occur in approximately 30% of NL patients. More severe complications can occur, such as deep tissue infections and osteonecrosis threatening life of the limb. Approximately 74,000 - 185,000 people in the United States and more than 200,000 – 500,000 people outside the United States are affected by NL.

 

The degeneration of tissue occurring at the NL lesion site is caused by a number of pathophysiological changes, which has made it extremely difficult to develop effective treatments for this condition. PCS499 may provide a solution since PCS499 and its metabolites affect a number of biological pathways, several of which contribute to the pathophysiology associated with NL.

 

On June 22, 2018, the FDA granted orphan-drug designation to PCS499 for the treatment of NL. On September 28, 2018, the FDA cleared our IND for PCS499 in NL such that we could move forward with the Phase 2a safety-dose tolerability trial. We dosed our first NL patient in this Phase 2a clinical trial on January 29, 2019 and completed enrollment on August 23, 2019. The main objective of the trial is to evaluate the safety and tolerability of PCS499 in patients with NL and to use the collected safety and efficacy data to design future clinical trials. Based on toxicology studies and healthy human volunteer studies, Processa and the FDA agreed that a PCS499 dose of 1.8 grams/day would be the highest dose administered to NL patients in this Phase 2 trial. As anticipated, the PCS499 dose of 1.8 grams/day, 50% greater than the maximum tolerated dose of PTX, appears to be well tolerated with no serious adverse events reported. To date, nine of the patients dosed at 1.8 grams/day have reported only mild adverse events related to the treatment, which occurred mostly in the first month of treatment and were quickly resolved. As expected, gastrointestinal or CNS adverse events were reported most often.

 

We have a meeting scheduled with the FDA in March 2020 to further discuss the development of PCS499, including a future clinical trial.

 

On August 29, 2019, we entered into an exclusive license agreement with Akashi Therapeutics, Inc. (“Akashi”) to develop and commercialize an anti-fibrotic, anti-inflammatory drug, PCS100, which also promotes healthy muscle fiber regeneration. In previous clinical trials in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD), PCS100 showed promising improvement in the muscle strength of non-ambulant pediatric patients. Although the FDA placed a clinical hold on the DMD trial after a serious adverse event in a pediatric patient, FDA has removed the drug off clinical hold and defined how PCS100 can resume clinical trials in DMD. Once we have obtained adequate funding, we plan to develop PCS100 in rare adult fibrotic related diseases such as focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis or Scleroderma.