NanoViricides Inc. (NNVC)

[DaysOnTheBeach]

PR: Nanoviricides Go Beyond Antibodies in Fighting Bird Flu

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/070917/20070917005494.html?.v=1

Nanoviricides Go Beyond Antibodies in Fighting Bird Flu

Monday September 17, 7:00 am ET

Completes Task of Destroying the Virus Particle

WEST HAVEN, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--NanoViricides, Inc. (OTC BB: NNVC.OB - News; the "Company"), said it will be presenting new preclinical data at the 5th International Bird Flu Conference in Las Vegas on September 28th.

"Just like antibodies, nanoviricides(TM) have ligands that attach to the virus particle. However, unlike antibodies, nanoviricides complete the task of taking the virus apart. This is clearly visible in our electron microscopy (EM) studies," said Anil R. Diwan, Ph.D., President of the Company.

"We feel that nanoviricides are the next great advance beyond immunotherapeutics, (use of antibodies and gamma-globulins as treatments for diseases)," explained Dr. Eugene Seymour, MD, MPH, adding, "We have already shown that nanoviricides are superior to FDA approved antibodies in a rabies animal model. This has validated our approach as being the next evolutionary therapeutics platform after antibodies."

"Nanoviricides do not suffer from the major problems of antibodies and of vaccines as antiviral strategies," said Dr. Diwan. Antibodies are relatively specific to a particular virus strain or subtype. It is well known that HIV and influenza viruses among many others, quickly escape antibodies. Vaccines depend upon the development of antibodies by the host, and thus, cannot protect efficiently against such changed viruses, as evidenced for influenzas.

FluCide(TM)-I is a broad-spectrum nanoviricide drug candidate based on a well-known ligand to which influenza viruses of all types must bind and cannot escape. Many other viruses and virus families also bind to this ligand and FluCide-I is expected to work against such viruses as well.

FluCide-HP is a broad-spectrum nanoviricide drug candidate based on well known "signature regions" called "polybasic sites" on all HPAI influenzas including H5N1 and H7N3. If the virus mutates in this region to escape FluCide-HP, its pathogenicity will decrease and it will no longer be a dangerous epidemic threat. FluCide-HP has also shown very high efficacy against the unrelated rabies virus, which possesses similar signature regions.

"Our next step will be to perform animal studies against H5N1 to further validate our results," said Dr. Seymour, adding, "There have been delays in the commissioning of the BSL3+ animal facility in Vietnam. We are currently exploring other options that would permit the studies to be done in the US with the latest available H5N1 strain."

EM photographs of nanoviricides dismantling virus particles are on the Company's website (http://www.nanoviricides.com/action_small.html).