Biotechnology company Anixa Biosciences, partnered by IT and pharma solutions company OntoChem, has announced that it will enter the next stage of development of its potential anti-viral therapy for Covid-19.
The decision was taken based on Proof of Concept (POC) animal study results, which the partners recently completed in a Syrian Hamster model.
Anixa, which usually focusses on the treatment and prevention of cancer and infectious diseases, and OntoChem are trying to develop an orally administrable, room-temperature stable, anti-viral therapy against the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, or the infamous Covid-19.
Apart from Remdesivir, two potential Anixa compounds were evaluated. Administration of the drugs did not cause any noticeable adverse effects to the infected hamsters. Overall behaviour and weight of the animals tested exhibited equal effectiveness of both Anixa compounds and Remdesivir.
However, for all drugs tested, viral shedding data and autopsied lung inflammation analysis was inconclusive. This could probably be because of the inadequacy of the animal model for such data.
Anixa Biosciences president and CEO Amit Kumar stated: “Based on the promising preliminary data in the animal study, we have made the decision to proceed to the next stage of drug development. We have chosen one compound around which we will perform combinatorial synthetic medicinal chemistry to evaluate whether we can increase potency and optimise pharmacokinetics. The most promising compounds will again be evaluated in both in vitro and in vivo studies.”
OntoChem CEO Lutz Weber said: “We expect this next phase of development to take roughly four to five months with another decision point at that time. We are pleased that our progress to date has been successful and we are looking forward to the next phase of development.”
Publicly-traded biotechnology company Anixa is into developing several programmes addressing cancer and infectious disease. The company’s vaccine portfolio includes vaccines to prevent triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) and ovarian cancer.