NanoViricides, Inc. (OTC BB: NNVC.OB) (the "Company"), reports that it has signed a research and development agreement with Dr. Ken S. Rosenthal's laboratory at Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy.
“We are very excited about this association with the Rosenthal Lab”
Under this agreement, Dr. Rosenthal and coworkers will evaluate the effectiveness of nanoviricides® drug candidates against Herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1). Cell culture models as well as in vivo (animal) studies will be employed for testing the drug candidates. This testing is expected to help the Company develop an effective nanoviricide drug against oral and genital herpes.
Dr. Rosenthal has been involved in the evaluation of HSV vaccines as well as anti-HSV drugs. His laboratory has developed an improved mouse model of skin-infection with HSV to follow the disease progression. This model has been shown to provide highly uniform and reproducible results. A uniform disease pattern including onset of lesions and further progression to zosteriform lesions is observed in all animals in this model. This uniformity makes it an ideal model for comparative testing of various drug candidates which, the Company believes, can be expected to lead to a broad-spectrum anti-HSV antiviral treatment capable of attacking both HSV-1 and HSV-2.
Dr. Rosenthal is a professor of microbiology, immunology and biochemistry at Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy (NEOUCOM). He is a leading researcher in the field of herpes viruses. His research interests encompass several aspects of how herpes simplex virus (HSV) interacts with the host to cause disease. His research has addressed how HSV infects skin cells and examined viral properties that facilitate its virulence and ability to cause encephalitis. In addition, Dr. Rosenthal has also been studying a viral protein that makes the HSV more virulent by helping the virus to take over the cellular machinery to make copies of its various parts, assemble these parts together into virus particles and release the virus to infect other cells. He is also researching how the human host immune response works against HSV for the development of protective and therapeutic vaccines.
The Company has developed a library of small chemical ligands that bind to the herpes virus envelope proteins. Using these ligands, a number of candidate nanoviricides that are capable of attacking the herpes virus have been developed. The Company believes that these nanoviricide drug candidates mimic the natural, common attachment function by which HSV-1 and HSV-2 bind to the body's host cells.
The Company has previously reported that some of our nanoviricide anti-HSV drug candidates reduced HSV viral load by as much as 99.99% in certain cell culture studies.
"We are very excited about this association with the Rosenthal Lab," said Dr. Eugene Seymour, MD, MPH, CEO of the Company, adding, "We will now be able to rapidly evaluate our anti-herpes therapeutics."
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