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news.Avi BioPharma has begun an exploratory safety and efficacy clinical trial using its proprietary Neugene antisense compound AVI-4065 in the treatment of hepatitis C virus.
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The multi-center study will assess the safety, tolerability, pharmacokinetics and viral response to daily subcutaneous administration of AVI-4065 among healthy volunteers and patients with chronic active hepatitis C virus (HCV).
“There is a large, unmet medical need for effective HCV treatments, as the current treatment regimen is successful in less than half of the patients infected with genotype 1 HCV, the most common form of the virus in the US,” said Dr Denis Burger, CEO of Avi. “The ability of our Neugene antisense to specifically target the HCV virus may offer a safer and more efficacious drug for patients,” added Dr Burger.
HCV is a single-stranded RNA virus. Because HCV and other single-stranded RNA viruses have relatively simple genetic structures, they are attractive targets for AVI’s Neugene antisense, which is designed to target conserved portions of the viral genetic code that are not likely to mutate over time.