NanoViricides Inc (NNVC)

[Ubertino]

A 'Guided Missile' Against Viruses

W. Haven drug company to test new drugs this fall

Business New Haven
09/04/2006
by BNH

The CEO of a start-up West Haven drug-development firm says his company is poised to usher in a new era of "just-in-time manufacturing" of antiviral medications.

In an August 28 interview in the Wall Street Journal, Eugene Seymour, MD, MPH, CEO of NanoViricides Inc., said his company would be able to rapidly respond to deadly outbreaks as a result of innovative manufacturing processes.

NanoViricides is a development stage company that is creating special purpose nanomaterials for viral therapy. A nanoviricide is a specially designed, flexible, nanomaterial that contains an encapsulated active pharmaceutical ingredient and targets it to a specific type of virus, like a guided missile.

Seymour said if NanoViricides' approach is successful it will mark "a completely new way of defining manufacturing in the pharmaceutical industry."

A relatively simple two-part structure is what makes a nanoviricide-type drug so adept at rapid response, Seymour said.

"Say there's an outbreak of a viral disease for which we have already created and tested a nanoviricide," Seymour said. "All we would then do is take the targeting molecule off the shelf, attach it to the nanomicelle, package it and you've got a drug treatment for that disease. That can happen in a matter of days."

The company has four drugs that will undergo a round of pre-clinical animal testing this fall in Vietnam. They include:

ï FluCide-I, which the company says is expected to work against all influenzas

ï AviFluCide, designed specifically to target the H5N1 strain of avian influenza

ï AviFluCide-HP, which was designed to attack the highly pathogenic influenza subgroup that is continuously re-emerging and changing, and

ï RabiCide, a compound engineered to attack rabies, which remains a major subtropical killer.

Currently housed at 135 Wood Street, NanoViricides hopes to expand its roster of scientists while locating additional research and development facilities, as well as a manufacturing plant.
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