According to Gary Blick, medical director of Circle Medical, VRX496 appears to cause wt-HIV particles to lose their envelopes and the in vivo pressure delivered by a patient’s own modified cells leads to massive quasispecie reductions and production of impaired and less replicative virions. VRX496 therapy appears to be a significant demonstration of slowing and possibly halting the replication of the infectious HIV virus in humans.
Laurent Humeau, vice president of R&D for VIRxSYS, said: “Our lentiviral vector VRX496 appears to sustain expression of the RNA antisense targeting the HIV envelope for a long period of time, with a measurable effect on the HIV replicative fitness up to three years following a single injection. We believe this will prove to be an important step in the treatment of this disease.”