SHELTON, CT / ACCESSWIRE / February 4, 2020 / NanoViricides, Inc. (NYSE American:NNVC) (the "Company") a global leader in the development of highly effective antiviral therapies based on a novel nanomedicines platform, reports that Dr. Anil Diwan, the Company's President and Executive Chairman of the Board, was interviewed on the Kennedy show on Fox Business News (FBN), on January 23, 2020. The Company has licensed a copy of the video excerpt from FBN and it is available on the Company's website (www.nanoviricides.com) under the heading "NanoViricides In the News", by clicking on "Dr. Anil Diwan on Fox Business - 01/23/2020 - By - Kennedy".
In discussing the recent Wuhan coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak, Ms. Kennedy asked Dr. Diwan how such outbreaks can be treated, and how the nanoviricides technology can be harnessed for that effect.
Dr. Diwan explained that, "These kind of viruses will keep coming at us at all times, nothing we can do to stop that. However, imagine if we can have a chip on which we can simply put the patient serum, and the spot where the virus binds on the chip is an effective drug against the virus, then we can quickly stop these outbreaks from happening. That was my dream in developing the nanoviricides technologies."
Dr. Diwan further elaborated that, "A nanoviricide is like a ‘Venus-Fly-Trap' for a virus particle. The virus would bind to it as though it is binding to cell surface receptors. However, the nanoviricide then is capable of entrapping the virus."
Ms. Kennedy further asked if this process would be faster than developing a vaccine?
Dr. Diwan replied that it would be definitely much faster.
Ms. Kennedy queried, "How quickly?"
Dr. Diwan said, "Once we can screen the patient serum across a chip, a drug can be in hand." On additional questions, he further elaborated that the Company is proving that this can be done by developing a number of drug candidates against many different viruses. "We have developed drug candidates against influenza, HIV, dengue, herpesviruses. Thus we are filling many points on the chip. It will need support from government agencies to make this nanoviricide chip for biodefense a reality," he said.
"And from regulatory agencies," added Ms. Kennedy.
Dr. Diwan further explains herein that, "Once such a chip with many nanoviricides on it is developed, then one can find a drug against the causative agent simply by flowing the infected patient's serum over it and recording the positive hits. Thus, a drug would be in hand even before identifying the pathogen, before performing gene sequencing on it, and even before having a diagnostic test in hand. Thus, it would be much faster than developing a vaccine or antibodies or diagnostic tests. The safety of the Company's nanoviricide platform technology is well established in many animal studies. The Company's first clinical drug candidate, NV-HHV-101, a skin cream for the treatment of shingles rash, has successfully undergone a full battery of IND-enabling safety/toxicology studies. Thus this nanoviricide chip approach of having a large number of drug candidates available for combating a novel pathogen is reasonable. In fact, it is possibly the only way novel pathogens can be stopped in a timely manner, before an epidemic breaks out."
Dr. Diwan had described a similar approach exploring the capabilities and potential of the nanoviricides technology at a US FDA public hearing on nanomedicines previously. The Company believes that as awareness of the nanoviricides technology and its capabilities grows, the Company should be able to gain support and would then be able to engage into further development of this approach.
The Company's top priority remains working on its first IND application for NV-HHV-101. The Company intends to solicit interest and financing from government agencies in order to accelerate its work on the coronaviruses and novel pathogens.
The Company is preparing an IND application for its first clinical drug candidate to go into human clinical trials. This drug candidate, NV-HHV-101, is a skin cream with the treatment of shingles rash as its first indication. It has shown broad-spectrum activity against HSV-1 (cause of "cold sores"), HSV-2 (cause of "genital ulcers"), and VZV (the varicella-zoster virus, that causes chickenpox in children and immune-compromised humans, and shingles in adults).
NV-HHV-101 has already gone through standard battery of safety-toxicological testing, which provides confidence that our platform is capable of creating safe drugs.
The Company has its own cGMP-capable drug manufacturing facility where it intends to produce the drugs for clinical supply.
The market size for the treatment of shingles is estimated at approximately one billion dollars by various estimates. These estimates take into account the Shingrix® vaccine as well as existing vaccines. About 500,000 to 1million cases of shingles occur in the USA alone every year.
The market size for our immediate target drugs in the HerpeCide™ program is variously estimated at billions to tens of billions of dollars. The Company believes that its dermal topical cream for the treatment of shingles rash will be its first drug heading into clinical trials. The Company believes that additional topical treatment candidates in the HerpeCide™ program, namely, HSV-1 "cold sores" treatment, and HSV-2 "genital ulcers" treatment are expected to follow the shingles candidate into IND-enabling development and then into human clinical trials. These additional candidates are based on NV-HHV-101, thereby maximizing return on investments and shareholder value.
The Company develops its class of drugs, that we call nanoviricides®, using a platform technology. This approach enables rapid development of new drugs against a number of different viruses. A nanoviricide is a "biomimetic" - it is designed to "look like" the cell surface to the virus. The nanoviricide® technology enables direct attacks at multiple points on a virus particle. It is believed that such attacks would lead to the virus particle becoming ineffective at infecting cells. Antibodies in contrast attack a virus particle at only a maximum of two attachment points per antibody. In addition, the nanoviricide technology also simultaneously enables attacking the rapid intracellular reproduction of the virus by incorporating one or more active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) within the core of the nanoviricide. The nanoviricide technology is the only technology in the world, to the best of our knowledge, that is capable of both (a) attacking extracellular virus, thereby breaking the reinfection cycle, and simultaneously (b) disrupting intracellular production of the virus, thereby enabling complete control of a virus infection.
About NanoViricides NanoViricides, Inc. (www.nanoviricides.com) is a development stage company that is creating special purpose nanomaterials for antiviral therapy. The Company's novel nanoviricide® class of drug candidates are designed to specifically attack enveloped virus particles and to dismantle them. Our lead drug candidate is NV-HHV-101 with its first indication as dermal topical cream for the treatment of shingles rash. The Company is also developing drugs against a number of viral diseases including oral and genital Herpes, viral diseases of the eye including EKC and herpes keratitis, H1N1 swine flu, H5N1 bird flu, seasonal Influenza, HIV, Hepatitis C, Rabies, Dengue fever, and Ebola virus, among others. The Company's technology is based on broad, exclusive, sub-licensable, field licenses to drugs developed in these areas from TheraCour Pharma, Inc. This press release contains forward-looking statements that reflect the Company's current expectation regarding future events. Actual events could differ materially and substantially from those projected herein and depend on a number of factors. Certain statements in this release, and other written or oral statements made by NanoViricides, Inc. are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements since they involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which are, in some cases, beyond the Company's control and which could, and likely will, materially affect actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. The Company assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise these forward-looking statements for any reason, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the company's expectations include, but are not limited to, those factors that are disclosed under the heading "Risk Factors" and elsewhere in documents filed by the company from time to time with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulatory authorities. Although it is not possible to predict or identify all such factors, they may include the following: demonstration and proof of principle in preclinical trials that a nanoviricide is safe and effective; successful development of our product candidates; our ability to seek and obtain regulatory approvals, including with respect to the indications we are seeking; the successful commercialization of our product candidates; and market acceptance of our products. FDA refers to US Food and Drug Administration. IND application refers to "Investigational New Drug" application. CMC refers to "Chemistry, Manufacture, and Controls".
