ViroLogic Enters Tenth Pharmaceutical Company Agreement to Assess New Anti-HIV Drugs
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., April 24 /PRNewswire Interactive News Release/ -- ViroLogic, Inc. (NASD: VLGC) today announced an agreement with DuPont Pharmaceuticals Company to assist DuPont Pharmaceuticals in the evaluation of new anti-HIV agents in development. DuPont Pharmaceuticals will use ViroLogic's drug resistance testing technology to evaluate drug activity against HIV strains that are resistant to currently available drugs. This is ViroLogic's tenth such collaboration with a leading biopharmaceutical company in this disease area.
ViroLogic now has collaborations with Abbott Laboratories, Agouron Pharmaceuticals, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Chiron Corporation, DuPont Pharmaceuticals, Gilead Sciences, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck & Co., Hoffmann-La Roche and Vertex Pharmaceuticals.
Under the terms of the agreement, ViroLogic's phenotypic and genotypic drug resistance assays, PhenoSense(TM) HIV and GeneSeq(TM) HIV, will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of DuPont Pharmaceuticals' investigational drugs in development.
As recommended by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, biopharmaceutical companies are using HIV resistance testing technology to enhance next-generation HIV drug development. There are 15 approved HIV drugs and another 40 new drugs in the pipeline, all of which will require resistance testing in their development.
"To date, resistance assays have been applied in the later stages of drug development, which we see as about a $70 million market with attractive growth prospects," said Bill Young, ViroLogic's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. "However, lead drug targets can be screened for resistance profiles much earlier in the development phase, and assays can also be applied in early stage drug discovery. The market potential here is significantly larger than the late stage application, and the technology exists to immediately implement the assay. Use of our assays in earlier stages could save pharmaceutical companies significant time and money."
ViroLogic expects to grow the pharmaceutical segment of its business by applying its technology and expertise to other serious viral diseases where resistance is a key obstacle to treatment.
"The growing number of hepatitis therapies in development also presents a very attractive opportunity, which we are proactively targeting," added Young. "ViroLogic is the only viral resistance company that provides the full range of resistance testing used in drug development today and is 'neutral' in that it does not develop its own drugs and does not intend to compete with the pharmaceutical companies. These factors make ViroLogic an ideal provider of drug discovery and drug development services. We feel that this is a platform we can grow by penetrating the earlier stages of drug discovery and development as well as by offering complimentary technologies." |
