Aphios
Corporation Awarded Innovative Research Grant from National
Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases, NIH to Develop
Novel ANTI-HIV Therapeutics
March
23, 2004 -
Aphios Corporation has been awarded
a Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Advanced Technology
Phase I grant from the National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health
(NIH) to develop novel anti-HIV therapeutics from its unique
library of marine microorganisms.
Currently,
there are 42 million AIDS cases worldwide, with a majority
present in the third world; 3.1 million deaths can be attributed
to HIV and AIDS in 2002 alone. There is no vaccine against
HIV, and AIDS, if untreated, will lead to the death of over
95% of infected individuals 10 years post-infection. In
the last few years, significant therapeutic breakthroughs
have been made. Mixtures of drugs directed at viral protease
and reverse transcriptase have proven to be effective in
lowering plasma viral load and slowing the progression of
AIDS. However, these cocktail therapies have serious side
effects and are financially unattainable by a majority of
the HIV-infected population. In addition, resistant strains
of HIV are emerging that contribute to the decline in efficacy
of these drug mixtures. Thus, new and cost-effective drugs,
preferably directed at different viral proteins, need to
be developed to keep ahead of this viral pandemic.
Aphios
has established a unique library of diverse marine microorganisms
and marine molecule fractions from normal to extremophilic
environments for the rapid discovery and development of
novel anti-infectives (HIV, influenza, smallpox, bacterial,
MDR). The marine environment represents an enormous and
poorly explored resource for anti-infective therapeutics
because of its genetic and chemical biodiversity. It is
also extremely diversified due to the variety of marine
habitats, depending on numerous differences in natural salinities,
temperatures and pressures. Aphios has screened over 10,000
partially-purified marine molecule fractions (more than
1 million molecular entities) from its unique marine microorganism
library for activity against HIV-1 in cytoprotection and
cytotoxicity assays and has identified over 300 “hits,”
for a hit rate of 3%, that are effective against HIV-1.
In this research, Aphios plans to prioritize and confirm
a sub-fraction of these “hits” in first a cytoprotection
assay and second in a direct viral reduction assay. High
priority “leads,” such as APP-069 with a selective
index (cytoprotection/cytotoxicity) of 250 that compares
extremely well with AZT, will be subjected to bioassay guided
fractionation, chemical structure elucidation and dereplication.
Aphios
Corporation is a biopharmaceutical company that is developing
enhanced natural therapeutics for health maintenance and
the treatment of human diseases with a focus on infectious
diseases, oncology and quality-of-life (QOL) medicines.
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