Nanoviricide drug candidate effectiveness confirmed against rabies and influenzas

Nov 13 2007

NanoViricides, Inc. has said that in a confirmatory study, their nanoviricide drug candidates exhibited a consistent 20% to 30% survival in the test animals.

In contrast, a commercial anti-rabies antibody produced 0% or no survival, as in the previous study. These results clearly demonstrate the superiority of the multi-valent targeting nanoviricides technology over antibody therapy. Scientists at the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology in Hanoi, Vietnam performed the studies.

“ Scientific data of this type provides further evidence of the effectiveness of these novel nanomedicines, ” said Dr. Eugene Seymour, the Company's CEO. Consistent and reproducible repeat results have also been reported against common influenza (H1N1) using different production batches in animal studies previously performed by the Company.

“ The fact that these repeat rabies studies were done in a premier independent government laboratory is extremely important to us, ” said CEO Eugene Seymour, MD, adding, “ this assures that no inherent bias influenced the outcome. This is of particular importance with any new technology on the cutting-edge of medical treatments. Our confirmatory strategy will be the same with the Ebola and Dengue work that is proceeding in two US government research laboratories. ”

An estimated 10 million people receive post-exposure treatments each year after being exposed to rabies-suspect animals. About 30,000 people in the United States receive both pre-and post exposure prophylaxis every year, at a cost of over $1000 per treatment course. The annual number of deaths worldwide caused by rabies is estimated to be 55,000, mostly in rural areas of Africa and Asia, according to a recent World Health Organization report.

Rabies, a uniformly fatal disease found primarily in Africa and Southeast Asia, had never before been successfully treated with drugs.

There are currently no FDA-approved treatment options for rabies once symptoms develop. In addition, the Company believes that significantly increased survival rate of these lethally infected animals is possible in the dose-ranging studies to follow.