>>Bevirimat Data Presented at 15th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections
Wednesday February 6, 4:02 pm ET
WATERTOWN, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Panacos Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:PANC - News), a biotechnology company dedicated to developing the next generation of antiviral therapeutic products, today announced that its lead product candidate, the HIV maturation inhibitor bevirimat (PA-457), was the subject of two presentations at the 15th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) held this week in Boston, MA.
Scientists from Panacos and Monogram Biosciences presented a study titled: “Measurement of Maturation Inhibitor Susceptibility using the PhenoSense™ HIV Assay.” In this study, Monogram modified their PhenoSense drug susceptibility assay to analyze the activity of bevirimat against HIV strains with known bevirimat resistance mutations, as well as a reverse transcriptase and protease inhibitor multi-drug resistant virus. The assay provided activity data consistent with previous in vitro studies of bevirimat-resistant virus, suggesting that it is suitable for further development as a high-throughput phenotyping assay to measure the sensitivity of HIV from patients to bevirimat or other maturation inhibitors. The study reported that many of the bevirimat-resistant HIV-1 strains had reduced replication capacity (were less fit) than wild type virus. Using the phenotyping assay it was also shown that an HIV strain resistant to protease inhibitors and reverse transcriptase inhibitors was hypersusceptible to bevirimat.
In the second presentation, Dr. Catherine Adamson of Dr. Eric Freed’s laboratory at the National Cancer Institute presented the results of another collaboration with Panacos, titled: “Viral Resistance to the HIV-1 Maturation Inhibitor Bevirimat (PA-457) in the Context of a Protease that Confers Resistance to Protease Inhibitors.” In this study, recombinant HIV strains bearing both protease resistance and bevirimat resistance mutations were found in many cases to have impaired replication compared to viruses with just one of the resistance mutations. The authors concluded that protease inhibitor-resistant mutants may be less likely than wild-type isolates to develop bevirimat resistance.
“These two studies highlight the potential importance of bevirimat in the context of modern HIV therapy,” said Graham Allaway, Ph.D., Panacos’ Chief Operating Officer. “While we are continuing to look at a variety of factors that may contribute to patient response to bevirimat, Monogram’s work demonstrates the power of its technology for assessing HIV drug resistance to maturation inhibitors. Dr. Adamson’s presentation further highlights the potential utility of bevirimat in the protease inhibitor-resistant population.”<<
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This resistance data is nice. This news appeared to be front run: PANC was up 16% at one point today, before giving it back towards the close, along with the rest of the market. Now if they can just get the formulation down before they run aground . . .
Cheers, Tuck |
