Grace Therapeutics Inc

We are focused on developing and commercializing products for rare and orphan diseases that have the potential to improve clinical outcomes by using our novel drug delivery technologies. We seek to apply new proprietary formulations to approved and marketed pharmaceutical compounds to achieve enhanced efficacy, faster onset of action, reduced side effects, more convenient drug delivery and increased patient compliance; all of which could result in improved patient outcomes. The active pharmaceutical ingredients used in the drug candidates under development by us may be already approved in a target indication or could be repurposed for use in new indications.

Our therapeutic pipeline consists of three unique clinical-stage drug candidates supported by an intellectual property portfolio of more than 79 granted and pending patents in various jurisdictions worldwide. These drug candidates aim to improve clinical outcomes in the treatment of rare and orphan diseases by applying proprietary formulation and drug delivery technologies to existing pharmaceutical compounds to achieve improvements over the current standard of care, or to provide treatment for diseases with no currently approved therapies.

The existing well understood efficacy and safety profiles of these marketed compounds provide the opportunity for us to utilize the Section 505(b)(2) regulatory pathway under the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act ("FDCA") for the development of our reformulated versions of these drugs and therefore may provide a potentially shorter path to regulatory approval. Under Section 505(b)(2), if sufficient support of a product’s safety and efficacy either through previous FDA experience or sufficiently within the existing and accepted scientific literature, can be established, it may eliminate the need to conduct some of the pre-clinical studies and clinical trials that new drug candidates might otherwise require.

We believe rare disorders represent an attractive area for drug development, and there remains an opportunity for us to utilize already approved drugs that have established safety profiles and clinical experience to potentially address significant unmet medical needs. A key advantage of pursuing therapies for rare disorders is the potential to receive orphan drug designation ("ODD") from the FDA. Our three drug candidates have received ODD status and, provided certain conditions are met at new drug application approval, those candidates, if approved, will be entitled to orphan drug exclusivity ("ODE"), which blocks FDA from approving for seven years any other application for a product that is the same drug for the same orphan indication, except in limited circumstances, such as a showing of clinical superiority to the product with ODE. ODD status can also result in tax credits of up to 25% of clinical development costs conducted in the United States upon marketing approval and a waiver of the NDA fees, which we estimate can translate into savings of approximately $4.3 million for our lead drug candidate, GTx-104. Developing drugs for rare diseases can often allow for clinical trials that are more manageably scaled and may require a smaller, more targeted commercial infrastructure.