Nymox Leads with Innovative Alzheimer's Disease Programs.

Business Editors, Health/Medical Writers

MAYWOOD, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 27, 2002

Nymox Pharmaceutical Corporation (Nasdaq:NYMX) has exciting new and innovative products and approaches to the diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer's disease in development according to Paul Averback, MD, DABP, the CEO of Nymox.

Alzheimer's disease is a dreaded terminal brain disease of the elderly. An estimated 4 million Americans and more than 15 million people around the world suffer from the disease. While there are drug treatments available to reduce the disease symptoms, there is no cure for the illness.

"We strongly believe that only new approaches to Alzheimer's disease will lead to the effective treatments for this deadly disease," said Dr. Averback. "At Nymox, our team of scientists and researchers have been exploring entirely different approaches based on our proprietary drug and diagnostic platforms. We already offer AlzheimAlert(TM), our diagnostic aid for Alzheimer's disease, to physicians across the United States and have made significant progress in our separate and distinctly different proprietary drug development programs. We also very recently received official allowance from the U.S. Patent Office for the patent for the use of statin drugs in the treatment or prevention of Alzheimer's disease."

Nymox utilizes its multidisciplinary teamwork, expertise with biomarkers, neuropathology, and model testing to generate new and promising therapeutic candidates for AD. Nymox's neuroscience accomplishments and expertise have been widely recognized and featured in many prestigious publications such as Science in its November 2, 2001 issue, Drug News and Perspectives in a cover story in its October 1998 issue, and numerous peer-reviewed entities.

One of Nymox's drug development programs targets neural thread protein (NTP), a unique brain protein associated with Alzheimer's disease and its disease processes. Researchers believe that NTP is associated with brain cell loss in Alzheimer's disease and is associated with other abnormalities known to be involved in the Alzheimer's disease process.

First discovered by a team of researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital, NTP is known to be elevated in the brain tissue, cerebrospinal fluid and urine of patients with Alzheimer's disease. Nymox licensed the patent rights to this discovery and developed AlzheimAlert(TM) which measures levels of NTP in urine. AlzheimAlert(TM) is available as a clinical reference laboratory test to physicians through the Company's CLIA-certified laboratory in Maywood, New Jersey. The test costs $295.

There is an extensive scientific literature over the past decade linking NTP to Alzheimer's disease and confirming its accuracy as a biochemical marker for this devastating disease. Recent publications include Alzheimer's Reports (2002; 1:1-6); Neurology & Clinical Neurophysiology (2002; 1: 1-7); Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology (2001; 60: 195-207); Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences, (2001; 58: 844-849); Journal of Alzheimer's Disease (2001; 3: 345-353); Alzheimer's Reports (2001; 4: 61-65); Neurology (2000; 54: 1498-1504) and (2000; 55: 1068); Alzheimer's Reports (2000; 3: 177-184); Alzheimer's Reports (1999; 2: 327-332); Journal of Contemporary Neurology (1998; art. 4a); Journal of Clinical Laboratory Analysis (1998; 12: 285-288) and (1998; 12: 223-226); Journal of Clinical Investigation (1997; 100: 3093-3104); and. Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology (1996; 55: 1038-1050).

Nymox's NTP drug program is aimed at developing compounds that inhibit the production or the action of NTP in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease. The goal is to prevent or reduce the massive brain cell loss characteristic of Alzheimer's disease. Another separate Nymox program targets the cell death mechanism in Alzheimer's disease.

Another of Nymox's programs targets spherons, tiny balls of densely packed protein found in brain cells scattered throughout the brains of all humans from age one. Nymox researchers believe that spherons are the source of senile plaques -- the characteristic lesion found abundantly in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease and believed by many researchers to play a pivotal role in the fatal illness.

According to Nymox researchers, as humans age the spherons grow, up to a hundred times larger, until they become too large for the cells that hold them. Once released from the cells, the spherons burst, creating senile plaques and setting off a cascade of cellular damage and biochemical changes contributing to the symptoms and signs of Alzheimer's disease.

The substantial evidence, including 20 important criteria of validity, linking spherons to senile plaques and Alzheimer's disease has been published in journals such as the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease (1998, 1: 1-34), Drug News & Perspectives (October, 1998), and Alzheimer's Reports (2000; 3: 177-184). The evidence includes correlating the disappearance of spherons in old age with the appearance of senile plaques and finding certain hallmark proteins in both spherons and senile plaques. In 2000, an international group of researchers published important findings in Alzheimer Reports (2000; 3: 177-184) confirming that spherons contain key proteins that are also known to be in senile plaques and showing that, like senile plaques, spherons contain unusually old proteins in terms of the human body's metabolism, with an average age of 20 to 40 years.

Nymox also holds the patent rights to a recently allowed patent for the use of statin drugs for the prevention or treatment of Alzheimer's disease. Statins are widely available drugs for the reduction of cholesterol, representing a $14 billion market worldwide. There is a body of recent scientific publications and studies linking cholesterol to Alzheimer's disease and certain aspects of the Alzheimer's disease process and showing a significantly reduced incidence of Alzheimer's disease for patients taking statin drugs to lower their cholesterol.

More information about Nymox is available at www.nymox.com, email: [e-mail], or 800/936-9669.

This press release contains certain "forward-looking statements" as defined in the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and the actual results and future events could differ materially from management's current expectations. Such factors are detailed from time to time in Nymox's filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulatory authorities.