Aphios
Awarded United States Patent for Antiviral Therapeutics
June
13, 2006 -
Aphios Corporation today announced that it has been awarded
United States Patent No. 7,037, 534 B2 for chemiluminescence
activated antiviral therapeutics.
The
development of new antiviral agents is an important and
difficult task. In general, compared to other classes of
anti-infectives, there is much less drugs available in the
field of antiviral therapy. The difficulties of developing
antivirals result, in part, from viral replication taking
place inside the infected cell while utilizing the cell’s
molecular machinery. Some viral diseases are virtually untreatable
(hepatitis C, hemorrhagic fevers induced by flaviviruses
Ebola, Lassa and related viruses). Moreover, a number of
new and emerging viral agents (HIV, West Nile, hantavirus,
influenza (H5N1)) have either entered or are threatening
to enter the human population, some of which have caused
or can cause serious epidemics and pandemics.
Currently,
there are no drugs that are generally effective against
different viral agents. Several compounds with broad antiviral
activity have been reported, but none of them has attracted
commercial development because of toxicity. There is, however,
one class of compounds that do not produce substantial toxicity
while at the same time having strong antiviral activity;
compounds in this class all require light to exert their
virucidal activity. Such compounds include the light-sensitive
plant pigment hypericin isolated from St. John’s Wort
and many chemically related compounds.
The
efficiency of hypericin-induced light-mediated viral inactivation
is so high that even relatively short exposure times, which
occur during routine tissue culture infection procedures,
were sufficient for nearly complete inactivation of the
exposed virus, notably HIV and other retroviruses. On the
contrary, if a virus is treated with hypericin in complete
darkness, then the virucidal effects are minimal, if at
all detectable. Obviously, one should not expect any benefits
from hypericin administration to patients afflicted by viral
diseases since there’s no light inside the organism.
Despite this reasonable assumption, clinical studies of
hypericin benefits for HIV and hepatitis C-infected individuals
have been performed with the predictable negative result.
These compounds do not work in the dark and thus, by themselves
are not effective within the human body. We have circumvented
this limitation by coupling light-sensitive compounds such
as hypericin with chemiluminescence generated by native
enzymes such as alkaline phosphatase present in normal tissues
within the body. Additionally, we have enhanced antiviral
efficacy by the addition of various anti-quenchers and wavelength-shifting
compounds.
Aphios Corporation (www.aphios.com) is a biopharmaceutical
company that is developing enhanced therapeutics and biologics
for health maintenance, disease prevention and the treatment
of human diseases with a focus on infectious diseases, oncology
and quality-of-life medicines.
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