Open Orphan PLC (AIM:ORPH, OTC:OPORF) has been awarded a £5m influenza human challenge study contract with a biotech company developing an antiviral drug for protection against respiratory viral infections.
The study, which is expected to commence in the second half of next year, will test and assess the efficacy of a single dosing regimen of the client's antiviral drug, with healthy adult volunteers, using subsidiary hVIVO’s Influenza human challenge model.
Open Orphan added it expects the majority of revenues to be recognised in 2022.
Flu remains a serious global health threat, added the AIM-listed group, with an estimated one billion cases per year, 3-5mln severe cases and 290,000 - 650,000 deaths per year.
Healthy volunteer human challenge studies of wild-type influenza play a major role in the development of vaccines and therapeutics against influenza, it said, adding hVIVO had been carrying out similar studies for more than twenty years.
Volunteers in challenge studies are dosed with the virus so that researchers can study how it progresses over the full term from infection to illness and through to recovery.
Cathal Friel, Open Orphan’s executive chairman, added: "We are delighted to be working with this biotech client to assess the efficacy of their antiviral product which has the potential to be an important treatment against respiratory viral infections, using the hVIVO Influenza human challenge study model.
"We have now signed contracts for 95% of our 2022 forecasted revenues. This is the fourth Influenza human challenge study that we have signed in 2021 and coupled with the contract wins that we have seen in other disease areas, this further underlines the growing interest in respiratory and infectious diseases within the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, which we expect to continue over the coming years.
"Additionally, the continued damaging effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have underlined the need for increased pandemic preparedness in relation to other potential pandemic infectious diseases, such as influenza.”