NanoViricides And Vietnamese Govt To Develop Bird Flu Virus Drug

NanoViricides company officials recently met with senior officials in the Vietnam Government's Ministry of Health. These meetings resulted in the signing of Memoranda of Understanding (MOU) with governmental agencies responsible for the prevention and treatment of the H5N1 virus.

The MOU calls for the government to supply biological materials to Nanoviricides, which are needed to rapidly develop a drug treatment for avian flu (AviFluCide-I). The Company believes that other than the US Centers for Disease Control and an international organization based in Europe, no other government or company has been granted access to certain of these biologics.

"Our approach is virus-specific therapy. Having unique access to the H5N1 virus enables us to develop drugs that act directly against this particular virus, whereas other companies are developing drugs against common influenza virus and hoping that some of them may also work against H5N1," said Dr. Anil Diwan, President of Nanoviricides.

Terms of the MOU also call for the collaborative development of a treatment for rabies, a generally fatal disease. The MOU allows these governmental agencies to have an exclusive license to use these drugs for the Vietnamese market.

Eugene Seymour, MD, MPH, CEO of Nanoviricides, says, "The MOU with Vietnam is a landmark agreement. It will enable Nanoviricides to pursue its goal of having AviFluCide-I tested in overseas facilities, because the company now has access to the current H5N1 strain of the virus. Our operational plan calls for testing to be completed in the next twelve weeks."

Dr. Seymour added, "Our system is also perfectly suited to deal with certain potential bioweapon viruses such as Ebola and Marburg. To our knowledge, we have a major head start in the area of targeted anti-viral therapies.

Copyright 2006 by Space Daily, Distributed United Press International