Announcements

Application for Provisional Patent Filed

5th February, 2010

Beta Pharmaceutical Limited is pleased to announce the significant progress which the Company has made in building a proprietary portfolio of patented, biochemically-modified derivative products based on tocotrienols isomers. The Company has been working in this regard to develop new derivative products which are not only more potent in killing breast cancer cells, but are also able to be more easily absorbed into the bloodstream and be more stable once there.

A provisional patent application has been filed by us on the 5th February, 2010 in the USA covering twelve new semi-synthetic analogues of alpha, gamma and delta tocotrienols which have been prepared and tested for anticancer activity against highly malignant mouse +SA epithelial cells and human MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells.

This is in addition to the eighteen new synthesized compounds derived from isomers of tocotrienols which are the subject of Beta Pharmaceutical Limited’s application for provisional patent filed on the 24th April, 2009.

The compounds which are the subject of the current patent application show between 2-15-fold better potency, improved chemical stability, and improved water solubility as compared to their parent tocotrienol isomers.

The compounds in question were designed by attaching natural acids to the isomers of tocotrienols, and they have the particular characteristic that they will transform later in the cancer cells back to the form of the parent tocotrienol isomer.

The twelve new prodrugs in question have been developed over the past 12 months by laboratories at the College of Pharmacy, University of Louisiana at Monroe.

The work of the laboratory leading this work under the Company's comprehensive breast Cancer and Health Project (Dr. Khalid El Sayed’s laboratory) encompasses semi-synthesis, which is the use of a simple single-step chemical reaction to modify the structure of existing natural compounds.

This is the fourth provisional patent application to be filed by Beta Pharmaceutical Limited and generates great confidence within our team to continue research to demonstrate the ability of alpha, gamma and delta tocotrienols and their new analogues to inhibit cellular migration of the highly metastatic human MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells and to prove up the potential of these newly developed tocotrienol-derivative/analogues for use in the prevention and treatment of breast cancer in humans.

Other studies are currently also being conducted by our laboratories at the University of Louisiana at Monroe using computer-assisted design for the production of additional semi-synthetic tocotrienol analogues. Management is confident that several other new provisional patent applications will be filed in due course covering new compounds discovered using this technique.

In this area of our work, management and the Company's scientific personnel are building proprietary assets comprising new potent compounds derived from tocotrienols. We believe that this action may help us to attract the attention of potential best in the class business partners in the pharmaceutical and consumer health sectors in the future as our business continues to develop.

The United States provisional patent application filed for this invention on the 5th February, 2010 establishes a record of the invention in the United States Patent and Trademarks Office and can form a claim of priority to the invention that will allow the Company and its partner to seek patent protection in the United States and in other countries throughout the world. The United States is the world's largest pharmaceutical market.

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