BetterLife Pharma Inc (CSE:BETR, OTCQB:BETRF) revealed that a pre-clinical study of its interferon AP-003 candidate to tackle the Delta variant of coronavirus (COVID-19) had started at the ImPaKT Facility at Western University in Ontario.
The study is being carried out in the lab of Dr Stephen Barr and his team in the department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Canadian university. The first proposed target indication is for people who are at higher risk to develop severe COVID-19 disease.
It follows on from earlier in-vitro studies at the university, which showed potent and similar anti-viral activity of AP-003 against the COVID-19 Wuhan strain and results are expected in the next two weeks.
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"COVID-19 is very much still a threat to the global population and its variants are the key challenge when developing therapeutics to protect against it," said Ahmad Doroudian, CEO of BetterLife, in a statement.
"The broad mechanism of action of interferon is such that our scientists hypothesized it could be equally effective against different variants. We are very pleased to see that early preclinical data confirms this as this takes us one step closer to the potential result of reducing overall hospitalization rate, long-term tissue damage and death by reducing the overall severity of the disease."
Dr Barr is also part of Canada’s Coronavirus Variants Rapid Response Network (CoVaRR-Net), whose goal is to rapidly answer critical and immediate questions regarding SARS-CoV-2 variants, noted the biotech.
"The global vaccine roll-out is making headway; however, there are still several reasons why there is a need for an effective, easy to administer, non-invasive treatment, such as AP-003," continued Doroudian.
"This includes the time it will take to vaccinate the global population; not knowing the duration of protection afforded by the current vaccines; emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants; and emergence of possible totally new coronavirus pandemics in the future. AP-003, being a Type I interferon, is a broad acting anti-viral agent, and therefore potentially could be effective in all these scenarios."
Shares in BetterLife zipped up 7.4% in Canada to C$0.29 each.
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Contact the author at giles@proactiveinvestors.com