Replies to post #115080 on NanoViricides Inc. (NNVC)

[changes_iv]

Another unsupported and biased opinion from an anonymous poster!

I still say the testing on mice/rats is all meaningless and will have to be redone with GMP(like) materials for an FDA eligible tox study.

Nanoviricides Reports that the FluCide Candidate was found to be Very Safe in cGLP-like Safety and Toxicology Study in Rats Performed by BASi

WEST HAVEN, CONNECTICUT -- Thursday, January 22, 2015 -- NanoViricides, Inc. (NYSE MKT: NNVC) (the "Company") a nanomedicine company developing anti-viral drugs, reported a good safety profile of an optimized FluCide® drug candidate in a GLP-like toxicology study in rats. These results are extremely important since they indicate that FluCide continues to look very promising as one of the most advanced candidates in the Company's drug development pipeline.
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These results are in agreement with the previously reported results of a non-GLP toxicology study in mice. The current study results also support the Company's positive findings in animal models of infection with different influenza A virus strains in which no safety or toxicology concerns were observed. The Company has previously reported that many of its FluCide candidates demonstrated extremely high anti-influenza activity in those models.

This study was developed in collaboration with BASi and conducted by BASi in a c-GLP-like fashion in order to understand the safety parameters of FluCide intravenous dosing.

The next phase of the toxicology package studies will involve larger animals, and will require much larger quantities of the drug candidate. The Company is in the process of commissioning operations at the new 1 Controls Drive, Shelton, CT facility in order to perform the scale up studies needed for making the large quantities of materials in a controlled manner. These upcoming studies will be performed in cGLP compliant manner to provide safety and toxicology data that are required for an IND submission to regulatory agencies.
http://www.nanoviricides.com/press%20releases/2015/Nanoviricides%20Reports%20that%20the%20FluCide%20Candidate%20was%20found%20to%20be%20Very%20Safe%20in%20cGLP-like%20Safety%20and%20Toxicology%20Study%20in%20Rats%20Performed%20by%20BASi.html

Ludwig Huber and Paul Lepore, FDA's 'Father of GLP' during a GLP Workshop in Tokyo.



Paul Lepore told the audience how they should prepare for a GLP inspection and what inspectors will ask.

Ludwig Huber explained how to implement computer validation in GLP environment. 1999

Independent from Location and Duration of a Study
GLPs regulate all non-clinical safety studies that support or are intended to support applications for research or marketing permits for products regulated by the FDA, or by similar other national agencies. This includes drugs for human and animal use but also aroma and color additives in food, biological products and medical devices. The duration and location of the study is of no importance. For example GLP applies to short term experiments as well as to long term studies. And if a pharmaceutical company subcontracts part of a study to a university, that university still must comply with the same requirements as the sponsor company. Some laboratories tried to get away from GLP through outsourcing, but I can tell you this does not work.
http://www.labcompliance.com/tutorial/glp/

NanoViricides President Dr. Diwan Presented FluCide Data at the 3rd Annual Influenza Conference held by GTC Bio on Friday, July 11
WEST HAVEN, CONNECTICUT -- Monday, July 14, 2014 -- NanoViricides, Inc. (NYSE MKT: NNVC) reports that its President, Dr. Anil Diwan, was invited to present the FluCide™ data at the 3rd Annual Influenza Research and Development Conference on Friday, July 11, at 0850 am. The Conference ran from July 9-11 at the Hyatt Regency in Boston, MA, and was held by GTC Bio (https://www.gtcbio.com/conferences/influenza-research-and-development-agenda).

Dr. Diwan discussed the nanoviricides® technology platform, and presented the pre-clinical data on the Company's first drug candidate, NV-INF-1, Injectable FluCide™, to treat all influenza infections in hospitalized patients. Influenza A H1N1 infected animals treated with FluCide survived the full 21-day observation period, whereas animals treated with 40mg/kg/d oseltamivir phosphate (Tamiflu®) survived only 8 days in this highly lethal study. Influenza A/WS/33/ (H1N1) virus was used in this study. The highly lethal infectious dose of 1M viral particles at time 0 h followed by another 1M virus particles at 23h that was employed caused uniform lethality in 5 days in untreated mice. Body weight began to decline in the infected, untreated mice, by days 2-3 days and continued to decline until death. The Oseltamivir-treated mice maintained body weight only through day 5, which declined thereafter until death. Similar to the survival results, the mice treated with NV-INF-1 maintained their body weight substantially longer, through day 14. NV-INF-1 demonstrated an unparalleled 1,000-fold reduction in lung viral load compared to untreated animals on day 4 in this lethal animal model study. Moreover, the lung viral load was suppressed to this baseline level through 13 days or longer, with a slight increase on day 19. In contrast, the current standard of care, oseltamivir, (Tamiflu®, Roche) exhibited only a 2-fold reduction in lung viral load at day 4, that rapidly rose by approximately 2X on day 7. Similar to the reduced virus titers, on day 4 the lungs from mice that were treated with NV-INF-1 showed a substantially lower lung weight (healthy) and displayed a markedly reduced presence of virus-induced lesions as compared to the untreated control and oseltamivir. Also similar to lung virus titers, the reductions in lung lesions in animals treated with NV-INF-1 were maintained at least through 13 days.

Dr. Diwan also discussed the extremely high safety of NV-INF-1 observed in preliminary safety/toxicology studies. He noted that no significant changes in all observed parameters were found even at the maximum feasible dose of approximately 2,700 mg/kg/d repeatedly given for five consecutive days.

He also presented the data on NV-INF-2, the Company's current oral anti-influenza drug candidate. NV-INF-2 has the same antiviral ligand as NV-INF-1, but a different polymeric backbone that has enabled significant oral effectiveness. NV-INF-2 has been evaluated in a mouse model of influenza virus infection using two different influenza virus a strains, A/WS/33/ (H1N1) and A/W/67 (H3N2v). NV-INF-2 treated mice survived as long as 14.5 days in an H1N1 lethal infection study, and for 15.6 days in an H3N2 lethal infection study. Oseltamivir treated animals died in only 7.6 days in H1N1 infection study, and in 9.6 days in the H3N2 study. The lethal infection viral dose and protocol was chosen such that the untreated animals died in 5 days in both H1N1 and H3N2 studies. Similar to substantially increased survival, NV-INF-2 also exhibited substantially superior reduction in lung viral titer and protection of lungs from lesions.

The data indicated that both NV-INF-1 and NV-INF-2 are highly effective, broad-spectrum, anti-influenza drugs. The Company has shown that they are effective against both group I and group II influenza A viruses.

Dr. Diwan also reported that the Company is successfully scaling up production of NV-INF-1 for the GLP Safety/Toxicology study at its current facilities. In addition, he reported that construction of the Company's new facility capable of cGMP production of all of the Company's nanoviricides drug candidates for human clinical batches is now complete. Facility testing and validation are in progress.

The market size for an effective influenza drug for treating severely ill hospitalized patients has been estimated in the billions of dollars, worldwide, depending upon the therapeutic value and cost savings. Currently, there is no effective therapeutic available for this indication. The Company believes that it could supply a substantial portion of the demand for this drug from its new small scale cGMP clinical drug facility. This drug is currently in IND-enabling studies.

This broad-spectrum FluCide drug is expected to work against most, if not all, forms of influenza virus, including epidemic, pandemic (e.g. H1N1/2009), high path influenzas such as H3N2, H7N9, and "bird flu" such as H5N1.

The total market size addressed by the Company's current drug programs is estimated at about $50 billion. In addition to Injectable FluCide, the Company is working on five more commercially important drug candidates, namely: DengueCide™, HerpeCide™, HIVCide™, Oral FluCide™ for out-patients, and a broad-spectrum antiviral drug for viral diseases of the external eye. All of our programs are for therapeutics to treat viral infections. Our drugs are expected to be useful as prophylactics as well. DengueCide has recently received orphan drug designation by the US FDA as well as the European EMA.

NanoViricides recently received an important international award, the "IAIR Award 2014 for Leadership in Nanomedicines in the North American Sector".

The Company currently has approximately $41 million cash-in-hand and cash-like-instruments. These funds are estimated to be sufficient for taking at least one of our drug candidates through initial human clinical trials, and possibly take another drug candidate into human clinical trials.
http://www.nanoviricides.com/press%20releases/2014/NanoViricides%20President%20Dr.%20Diwan%20Presented%20FluCide%20Data%20at%20the%203rd%20Annual%20Influenza%20Conference%20held%20by%20GTC%20Bio%20on%20Friday,%20July%2011.html

The c-GLP Tox Package study will be conducted by BAS incorporated (BASi), a well-known contract laboratory excelling in such studies. As we institute this study, we plan to use the same material for additional efficacy studies of our drug candidate against a number of different influenza virus types, subtypes, and strains. This is required to ascertain the broadspectrum nature of the drug candidate. Our earlier studies have already demonstrated that this drug candidate is highly effective against both Type I and Type II Influenza A viruses in highly lethal animals studies. We believe that it should be capable of attacking almost any Influenza A virus, because it mimics the sialic acid receptor that all influenza viruses use to enter a host cell. After these studies are complete, and we have the reports in hand, we will be able to submit an Investigational New Drug” application (IND) to the US FDA. An IND also requires at least two consistent cGMP batches of the drug to have been produced. However, certain international regulatory agencies do not require cGMP product, but rather cGMP-like product. The difference is subtle, but can make a difference of several months. We plan on taking advantage of this and try to request permission for human clinical trials abroad soon after we can make cGMP-compliant product in the new facility.
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http://www.nanoviricides.com/2014-ceo-letter.pdf

The difference is subtle...

Facilities and Equipment. Although it generally is not necessary to fully qualify all equipment and validate all processes used in the manufacture of a product during its early development stages, it is important to document which equipment was utilized, why it was selected, and how it was used, cleaned, etc. If calibration of the equipment used to manufacture the product would typically be required in a GMP environment, a similar system is highly desirable at the research and development stage. In short, an intelligent evaluation of which pieces of equipment are critical to the operation should be made as soon as possible, and those critical pieces of equipment should be targeted to achieve compliance with "GMP-like" requirements by the time clinical-grade material is produced. Analogously, if the manufacturing process requires microbiologically-controlled facilities, it is prudent to measure and document the environmental control of these facilities to maintain product integrity and comparability.

Setting priorities for reaching compliance with GMP requirements is an integral part of product development planning. Once critical facilities and equipment have been identified, it is time to establish a schedule for generating compliance documentation. During product development, the move toward full compliance with Good Practice regulations is best regarded as a continuum, rather than a "now nothing, now everything" approach.
http://www.regulatory.com/forum/article/gdps.html

"by the way, I'm sure that when you think human trials for drugs you think of hundreds of millions of dollars and years of time, well in this case because the disease only lasts a week, two weeks,...that it is possible to complete human trials in the space of a few short months...four parts to the human trials" ~ Dr. Eugene Seymour, CEO Nanoviricides, Inc.

...then on the CEO letter he went to explain how would this be possible:

The number of patients that need to be enrolled in a clinical trial depends upon how good the drug is. If the drug effect is very easily separated from the placebo, and more so, from the standard of care, then the trial would require fewer patients to reach the clinical end point of determining that the drug is indeed effective or superior, as the case may be. Therefore we believe, based on the very strong efficacy observed in our animal studies, that our influenza clinical trials will be short, and will be relatively inexpensive.

http://www.nanoviricides.com/2014-ceo-letter.pdf

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What a Bad Flu Season Could Cost the U.S. Economy
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The resulting misery for millions of Americans is also lousy news for the economy. Flu incurs direct costs, such as the price of medical treatment, and indirect costs, such as lost productivity when workers stay home sick. There's also the cost of lost life: Influenza kills between 3,000 and 49,000 people in the U.S. each year, generally older people, young children, or people with medical conditions such as lung or heart disease that make them vulnerable to complications. The CDC recommends that everyone (except infants less than six months old) get vaccinated, especially those considered high-risk because of other health conditions.
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Tallying the total cost of flu is difficult. In a 2007 article published in the journal Vaccine, CDC researchers put the total economic burden at $87 billion annually, in 2003 dollars, counting a statistical measure that puts a dollar value on lost life. Among the costs: 3.1 million days patients spend in hospitals, 10 times as many doctors visits, and 44 million days of missed work. The estimates come with a high level of uncertainty, though: Researchers calculated the total cost in a range from $47 billion to $150 billion a year. The CDC is updating these numbers, but there's no telling when they'll be ready.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-10/flu-what-a-bad-influenza-season-could-cost-the-us-economy