NanoViricides (NYSE-A:NNVC) announced that it is investigating the potential use of its lead drug candidate NV-387 to treat MPOX patients under the World Health Organization’s Monitored Emergency Use of Unregistered and Investigational Interventions (MEURI) protocol.
This follows the organization’s recent declaration of a Public Health Emergency due to the 2024 MPOX outbreak.
The company, a clinical-stage leader in broad-spectrum antiviral nanomedicines, highlighted that NV-387 has completed Phase 1 clinical trials with no reported adverse events and has demonstrated excellent safety and tolerability.
In preclinical studies, NV-387 significantly improved survival rates in animal models of MPOX, showing effectiveness comparable to tecovirimat, the currently approved treatment for smallpox.
These results are particularly important given the limitations of existing therapies for MPOX, especially against the more severe Clade 1 and Clade 1b variants responsible for the current outbreak, NanoViricides (NYSE-A:NNVC) said.
The animal studies, using a model of lethal ectromelia virus infection that emulates direct skin transmission, a primary mode of MPOX spread, revealed that oral treatment with NV-387 increased survival by 75%, matching the results achieved with tecovirimat.
Furthermore, a combination treatment using NV-387 and tecovirimat, known as NV-387-m-T, resulted in an even greater increase in survival, highlighting the potential for enhanced efficacy when both drugs are used together.
NV-387's novel mechanism of action, which blocks the virus from infecting cells, offers a promising alternative or complement to current treatments, which generally focus on inhibiting the release of virus particles after infection.
NanoViricides also emphasized the broader potential of NV-387 as a revolutionary antiviral treatment, comparable to the impact of penicillin on bacterial infections.
In addition to its effectiveness against MPOX, NV-387 has shown promise in treating other major respiratory viruses, including RSV, influenza, and COVID-19, in non-clinical animal trials, positioning NV-387 as a potential single-drug solution for a wide range of viral infections.