NanoViricides reports HIVCide-I significantly superior to current anti-HIV three drug cocktail standard

Aug 11 2008

NanoViricides, Inc. said that additional biological tests and data analysis have shown that animals treated with its lead anti-HIV drug candidate, HIVCide-I, demonstrated a substantially greater reduction in viral load -- number of infectious virus particles per milliliter of blood -- when compared to the animals given the anti-HIV "combo cocktail" in a preliminary animal study. An important objective of anti-HIV treatment is to minimize the viral load.

These new data expand on the findings previously reported and are consistent with earlier results. The Company has previously reported that HIVCide-I was substantially superior to the combo therapy in improvement of survival time, as well as in reducing the body weight loss, in this preliminary animal study.

"We now know that HIVCide-I was clearly superior to the triple drug combo cocktail in all parameters we observed," said Anil R. Diwan, PhD, President of the Company, adding, "The novel mechanism of action of HIVCide-I defines a new class of anti-HIV drugs. This enables that it can be combined with the existing cocktail. In such a combination, a much greater level of effectiveness could be achieved compared to what is possible today."

"If our preliminary results can be duplicated in humans, it is quite possible that HIVCide-I, either alone or in combination with the current combo cocktail, may provide a 'functional cure' for HIV/AIDS," said Eugene Seymour, MD, MPH, CEO of the Company.

Anthony S. Fauci, MD, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), NIH, recently described "functional cure" as a state short of true HIV cure that allows a patient to live a life practically free of HIV following prolonged treatment, although the infection may still be present in a latent fashion. True cure (complete freedom from HIV) may be much more difficult to achieve than functional cure because the virus hides in immune cells that make up "latent reservoirs" (http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/conditions/08/05/ fauci.hiv.column/index.html).

The Company is now in discussions with renowned HIV scientists as to the nature of the additional experiments needed to develop the nanoviricide drug candidate for FDA approval.

These Bio-Safety Level 3 studies employing the well known SCID-hu Thy/Liv HIV mouse model were supervised by Dr. Krishna Menon, PhD, VMD, MRCS, a world-renowned authority in preclinical and toxicological studies of innovative therapeutics.