NanoViricides, Inc. (OTC:NNVC) reported yesterday that its optimized FluCide drug candidates achieved dramatic reduction in viral load within the lungs of animals infected with a lethal dose of H1N1 influenza virus. Today, shares of NNVC jumped a respectable 8 percent to $1.65 per share on volume of nearly 650,000 shares compared to its average daily volume of 363,000 shares. NNVC has a market cap of $216 million and a 52-week range between $0.80 and $2.64 per share.
The Company has previously announced that these optimized FluCide drug candidates demonstrated dramatically improved survival in this animal study. NNVC now reports that there was good correlation between viral load reduction and the length of survival.
The most effective FluCide candidate demonstrated a fifteen-fold (15X) greater viral load reduction as compared to Tamiflu(r) (Roche), and a thirty-fold (30X) greater viral load reduction as compared to untreated animals. Tamiflu demonstrated a viral load reduction of only twofold (2X) compared to the untreated animals in this high infection, lethality study. The viral load is a measure of the amount of infectious influenza virus in the lungs of infected animals. This profound decrease in viral load is consistent with the observed substantial increase in length of survival upon nanoviricide treatment. The Company previously reported that animals treated with this FluCide candidate survived for as long as 18.1 days on average, compared with only 7.8 days for Tamiflu treated animals. A survival length of 21 days would be considered indefinite survival in this animal model.
The studies were conducted by Dr. Krishna Menon, PhD, VMD, MRCS, at KARD Scientific, MA. “Treatment with the Nanoviricide compounds resulted in a profound reduction in viral load. Other overt parameters of virus infection were similarly decreased. In addition, survival time was significantly increased,” said Krishna Menon, PhD, President of KARD Scientific.
The nanoviricides have been well tolerated with no overt adverse effects observed even in animals treated for more than 2 weeks. The Company, therefore, believes that dosage of the nanoviricides can be further increased to achieve greater levels of effectiveness. Additional data related to various parameters including histology and cytokines are pending from this study. The Company plans to report on the same as the datasets are analyzed.
NanoViricides is a development stage company that is creating special purpose nanomaterials for viral therapy. The Company's novel nanoviricide class of drug candidates are designed to specifically attack enveloped virus particles and to dismantle them. The Company is developing drugs against a number of viral diseases including H1N1 swine flu, H5N1 bird flu, seasonal Influenza, HIV, oral and genital Herpes, viral diseases of the eye including EKC and herpes keratitis, Hepatitis C, Rabies, Dengue fever, and Ebola virus, among others.
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