Friday, February 15, 2008

SEC approves RXi's carve-out from CytRx

RXi Pharmaceuticals Corp. has won approval from government regulators to begin trading as a separate entity from its parent company, Los Angeles-based drug firm CytRx Corp.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission declared RXi's S-1 registration statement form effective, and CytRx (Nasdaq: CYTR) has announced that it intends to distribute shares in RXi to its own shareholders on March 11, company officials report. Following that distribution, shares of Worcester-based RXi will trade on the Nasdaq Capital Market under the symbol "RXII."

Late last year, RXi licensed RNA-interference sequences from research products giant Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. RXi said its exclusive license from Waltham-based Thermo (NYSE: TMO) covers the therapeutic uses of RNAi sequences for an undisclosed number of target genes

RXi, a developer of RNAi drugs, was launched in January 2007 with a scientific advisory board chaired by Craig Mello, winner of a 2006 Nobel prize for his research of RNAi.