NanoViricides, Inc. (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.
No direct adverse clinical effects were found upon administration of the FluCide candidate intravenously at doses of up to 300mg/kg/day for 14 days (a total of 4,200mg/kg) in rats. Organs were examined for gross histological observations. Microscopic histological tissue analysis was also performed. There were no adverse histological findings in gross organ level histological examination, nor were there any adverse findings in microscopic histological analysis. Equally importantly, there were no meaningful effects observed on animal weight gain, food consumption, hematology, or clinical chemistry at the end of the 14 day dosing period.
The study was conducted at BASi (Bioanalytical Systems, Inc., NASDAQ: BASI) in Evansville, Indiana. The study was performed in a cGLP-like fashion, compliant with BASi Evansville standard operating procedures. BASi has over 40 years of experience providing contract research services and niche instrumentation to the life sciences, primarily drug research and development.
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 cGLP-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.
Source: http://www.nanoviricides.com/