NanoViricides, Inc. (OTC BB: NNVC.OB) (the "Company") announced today that it has been invited to present its anti-influenza drug development studies at the TechConnect World 2011 Conferences and Expo. The Conferences and Expo are being held June 13-16 at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, MA (http://www.techconnectworld.com/World2011/).
Dr. Anil R. Diwan, President and Chairman of the Company, will present a talk entitled "Nanoviricides® as Anti-Influenza Agents" at this Conference. This oral presentation is scheduled for 11:20 am on June 16, in the session entitled "Bio Nano Materials: Novel bio nano materials and applications" (http://www.techconnectworld.com/World2011/thursday.html).
The Company has completed several anti-influenza animal efficacy studies to date. The Company has improved its FluCide™ candidates successfully with each study.
In the most recent study, the Company has reported that post-infection treatment with its optimized FluCide™ drug candidates achieved 1,000-fold reduction in the levels of infectious virus in the lungs of animals with a lethal influenza virus infection. Of great clinical significance is the fact that 2 of the optimized FluCide™ drug candidates maintained this greatly reduced lung viral load throughout the duration of this 21 day study. Thus, treatment with FluCide drug candidates appeared to protect against the complete cycle of infection, virus expansion and spread of infection in the lungs that follows the initial virus infection. These findings corroborate the previously reported findings of both increased animal survival and protection of the lungs from influenza virus tissue damage in FluCide-treated animals in this H1N1 influenza study.
In contrast, Oseltamivir (Tamiflu® Roche) demonstrated very limited efficacy in the same study. Thus, animals treated with oseltamivir showed less than a 2-fold reduction in lung viral load at the same time point where FluCide candidates demonstrated a greater than 1,000-fold reduction (i.e. at 4 days post infection). This indicated a 500-fold greater reduction in viral load by FluCide drug candidates over Oseltamivir. In addition, in the animals treated with Oseltamivir (Tamiflu®, Roche) the lung viral load increased at 7 days to the same level as that found in the infected, untreated control animals shortly before their death. In contrast, the lung viral load in the FluCide candidate treated animals remained at the low levels attained at 4 days for the entire 21 days study duration for two of the candidates.
The Company has previously reported that the same optimized FluCide™ nanoviricide drug candidates achieved significantly increased survival (20.2 to 22.2 days) and greater than 95% reduction in lung inflammation and necrosis in this study. In contrast, animals treated with Oseltamivir showed a mean survival of just 8.3 days and only a 50% reduction in lung inflammation and necrosis.
The Company will present the data and discuss their significance at this meeting.
The studies were conducted by Dr. Krishna Menon, PhD, VMD, MRCS, at KARD Scientific, MA. One million virus particles of Influenza A Strain A/WS/33 (H1N1) were aspirated directly into the lungs of mice. The same quantity of virus infection was repeated at 22 hrs. This influenza model was designed to be uniformly fatal in 100% of the infected, untreated animals within 5 days after infection. Treatment with the FluCide candidates and Oseltamivir commenced 24 hours after the first viral infection. The duration of the study was 21 days.
Study reveals underuse of antivirals for children hospitalized with influenza