NanoViricides, Inc. recently announced it has executed a Collaborative Research and Development Agreement for Material Transfer (CRADA) with the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID).
Certain novel anti-Ebola nanomedicine drug candidates recently developed by the NanoViricides will be evaluated by USAMRIID scientists in their BSL-4 facilities for activity against the deadly Ebola virus under this agreement.
“We are very happy to restart our collaboration with USAMRIID for developing an effective drug against the deadly Ebola virus,” said Dr. Eugene Seymour, MD, MPH, CEO of NanoViricides, Inc. “We intend to ship the samples as soon as the synthesis of the new drug candidates is completed.”
The company is now synthesizing test quantities of its novel nanoviricide drug candidates, designed to mimic the host cell receptor onto which the Ebola virus binds to cause an infection. The site at which the virus binds does not change, in spite of mutations.
This approach could allow drug candidates to continue to work in spite of field mutations in the virus, offering a significant advantage over vaccines, antibodies, siRNA, antisense, and several other therapeutic modes, which a virus can overcome due to mutations.
“We are using scalable processes so that we can rapidly transfer synthesis to kg-scale production, which we believe will be sufficient to contain the spread of the current Ebola epidemic,” said Anil R. Diwan, PhD, President and Chairman of the Company, adding, “We believe that the collaboration with USAMRIID will enable timely testing of our candidates in an effort to rapidly zero in on a final drug candidate against Ebola.”
Source: NanoViricides press release, adapted.
