WAKEFIELD, MA – March 2, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) Innovation Pharmaceuticals (OTCQB:IPIX) (“the Company”), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company, is pleased to provide scientific rationale and clinical development perspectives for Brilacidin, the Company’s defensin mimetic drug candidate, as a potential novel coronavirus (COVID-19) treatment. Notably, Brilacidin is one of the few drugs targeting COVID-19 that has been tested in humans in Phase 2 clinical trials for other clinical indications, providing an established safety and efficacy profile, thereby potentially enabling it to rapidly help confront the emerging worldwide coronavirus crisis.
Linked below is an overview document (a downloadable pdf) summarizing the scientific rationale for developing Brilacidin as a potential COVID-19 treatment, both as an intravenous medication and as a possible vaccine.
“Background and Scientific Rationale for Brilacidin as a Potential Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Treatment” (March 1, 2020)
http://www.ipharminc.com/s/IPIX-Brilacidin-Defensin-Mimetics-COVID-19-Overview-March-1-2020-update.pdf
Defensins are small antimicrobial peptides expressed widely in the animal kingdom that serve as the first line of defense against foreign invasion of the body.
Defensin-based therapeutics—of which Brilacidin is the leading example, and the most advanced drug candidate among this class currently in clinical testing—represent an attractive possible intervention to combat the coronavirus given innate and multifaceted immunomodulatory properties. Defensins exhibit a number of distinct and highly favorable therapeutic characteristics: anti-bacterial, anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal, anti-biofilm, anti-cancer, and antiviral.
Brilacidin, a mimetic of defensins, was computationally designed to be smaller (1/10th the size), more stable, more potent (by a 100-fold) and more selective (by a 1000-fold) than natural defensins, a type of antimicrobial peptide, so as to overcome most shortcomings (e.g., degradation, toxicity, malabsorption, high-cost of manufacturing) that have complicated their clinical development. The antiviral properties of natural defensins and their synthetic mimics are actively being studied by virologists the world over, with newer understandings elucidating their direct mechanisms of action against non-enveloped and enveloped viruses alike, along with their role in the regulation of inflammation and chemoattraction.
As disclosed, the Company is shipping Brilacidin drug substance this week to a U.S.-based Regional Biocontainment Lab (RBL) to evaluate its potential antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties in the context of viral infections, including inhibition of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19. It is anticipated that these tests might be completed within several weeks of the RBL’s receipt of Brilacidin. Separately, a Material Transfer Agreement (MTA), with a leading University Virology Lab overseen by one the world’s top coronavirus experts, is anticipated to be executed this week. The Company has also submitted a preliminary summary of Brilacidin’s potential as a novel coronavirus treatment to the U.S. Government’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), dedicated to rapidly identifying and funding medical countermeasures to COVID-19. There is no assurance made or implied that testing of Brilacidin for any coronavirus will be successful.