ISTA Pharmaceuticals Expands Its Pipeline in Allergy ...( - ISTA acquires exclusive North Ame...),Health

- ISTA acquires exclusive North American rights to bepotastine for nasal

allergy -

IRVINE, Calif., Sept. 26 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ISTA Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: ISTA), announced today it has licensed exclusive North American rights to nasal dosage forms of bepotastine, an investigational product for the treatment of allergy symptoms, from Tanabe Seiyaku Co., Ltd. Last year, ISTA obtained exclusive North American rights to ophthalmic allergy applications of bepotastine and has been developing an ocular formulation of bepotastine to treat the symptoms of ocular itching that accompany reactions to allergens. Following the previously announced positive Phase II/III clinical results the Company received with its ocular formulation, which showed bepotastine had a positive impact on nasal allergy symptoms, ISTA made the decision to add nasal bepotastine to its pipeline.

"As allergies affect both the eyes and the nose, we acquired the North American rights to nasal dosage forms of bepotastine to provide us the opportunity to offer both nasal and ocular formulations to patients. As many of you know, we have close relationships with the ophthalmic community, and, based upon our interactions with our thought leaders, we determined that complementing our ophthalmic formulation with a nasal formulation of bepotastine would potentially allow patients to experience relief from both ocular and nasal allergy symptoms," stated Vicente Anido, Jr., President and CEO of ISTA. "Further, the medical community has experience treating ocular allergy symptoms with a nasal formulation antihistamine.

"As we now have four product candidates in our pipeline, T-Pred(TM), ecabet sodium, op
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