ANN ARBOR, Michigan, May 7, 2008 — Pipex Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (AMEX: PP), a specialty pharmaceutical company developing innovative late-stage drug candidates for the treatment of neurologic and autoimmune diseases, announced today that it has received a notice of allowance from the United States Patent and Trademark Office for exclusively licensed U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/057.353 containing claims covering the use of thiomolybdates such as oral tetrathiomolybdate (oral TTM) for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

Pipex’s anti-copper product candidate oral TTM, a thiomolybdate covered by this notice of allowance, has demonstrated a 40% reduction in insoluble amyloid-beta (p<0.05), a key Alzheimer’s disease protein in preclinical animal models of AD. Oral TTM’s specificity and unique mechanism of action for rapidly lowering toxic free copper levels, may position oral TTM as the first available therapeutic agent capable of correcting the serum and CNS free copper dyshomeostasis that might represent an important fundamental cause of AD. Oral TTM’s ability to specifically bind and reduce free copper levels, differentiates it from other non-copper chelating agents that liberate bound copper stores thereby increasing free copper levels and CNS exposure to free copper.

“As the growing body of scientific evidence continues to implicate toxic free copper exposure from residential tap water and free copper-containing multivitamins marketed to the elderly, we believe that there will be a place for compensatory CNS decoppering agents such as oral TTM. This notice of allowance supplements our exclusively licensed oral TTM intellectual property which includes U.S. Patent No. 6,855,340. We anticipate that this important notice of allowance for the first free copper specific CNS anti-copper agent will be followed by further allowances from our leading patent estate covering the use of anti-copper strategies for the millions of existing AD patients suffering from accumulated neurodegenerative copper-containing CNS plaques and tangles.”

Market Opportunity for Oral TTM in Alzheimer’s Disease

It is estimated that more than 4.5 million Americans and 12 million people worldwide suffer from AD. Risk factors for the disease include age and family history. Age is the most important risk factor for AD; the number of people with the disease doubles every five years beyond age 65. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, the disease affects one in 10 persons over the age of 65, and 50% of those over 85 years old.

There is an urgent need for an effective treatment for the illness, caused in part by the rising health care, institutional, and social costs for the treatment and care of Alzheimer’s sufferers. In May 2002, the National Institute on Aging (NIA) reported that the cost of care to family, caregivers and society in general was estimated to exceed $100 billion per year, up from $18 billion in 1996, ranking AD as the disease with the greatest economic cost to society. These costs are expected to rise sharply as the baby-boom generation ages and more people become at risk for the disease. As people live longer, their risk of developing AD increases.

The market for treatment of AD is equally large, accounting for $3 billion in worldwide sales in 2004. This market is expected to grow to $5 billion by 2009. Aricept

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