Innovation Pharmaceuticals Inc (IPIX)

[olden_grumpini]

The science is interesting and ~95% reduction is impressive but, if you read the paper and understand how much brilacidin was used, you might question whether this result has any clinical application.

Here’s the full quote from the paper (go to the paper if you want to see the figure):

Finally, we investigated if BRI+CAS could impact A. fumigatus virulence in a chemotherapeutic murine model of IPA. Fungal burden in the lungs was approximately 50% reduced after 3 days post-infection in mice treated either with CAS (1mg/kg) or BRI (50 mg/kg) when compared with the non-treated mice (Figure 5C). However, the combination of BRI+CAS significantly reduced the fungal burden by ~95% when compared with the non-treated mice (Figure 5C). These results strongly indicate that the combination BRI+CAS is able to clear A. fumigatus infection in the lungs in a chemotherapeutic murine model of IPA.

Taken together, these data indicate that the combination treatment of BRI+CAS is non-toxic to mammalian cells in vitro and is able to enhance clearance of A. fumigatus infection in pulmonary cells in vitro and in vivo when compared to monotherapy alone.

They used a dose of 50 mg/kg of brilacidin.

For comparison, the P2 ABSSSI trial that CTIX did used a maximum dose of brilacidin of 1.2 mg/kg spread out over 3 days (0.6 mg/kg on day one followed by 0.3 mg/kg on days 2 and 3). The 50 mg/kg used in the paper is >40X that dose.

The P2 ABSSSI trial that Polymedix did, where they admitted that their dosing was too high, used a maximum dose of brilacidin of 2.4 mg/kg spread out over 5 days (1.0 mg/kg on day one followed by 0.35 mg/kg daily for four days). The 50 mg/kg used in the paper is >20X that dose.