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Innovation Pharmaceuticals Provides Scientific Rationale and Clinical Development Perspectives for Brilacidin as a Potential Novel Coronavirus COVID-19 Treatment
Innovation Pharmaceuticals Provides Scientific Rationale and Clinical Development Perspectives for Brilacidin as a Potential Novel Coronavirus COVID-19 Treatment.
About this update from Innovation Pharmaceuticals Inc.
[{"type":"text","content":"\n WAKEFIELD, Mass., March 02, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- March 2, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) Innovation Pharmaceuticals (OTCQB:IPIX) (“the Company”), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company, is pleased to provide scientific rationale and clinical development perspectives for Brilacidin, the Company’s defensin mimetic drug candidate, as a potential novel coronavirus (COVID-19) treatment. Notably, Brilacidin is one of the few drugs targeting COVID-19 that has been tested in humans in Phase 2 clinical trials for other clinical indications, providing an established safety and efficacy profile, thereby potentially enabling it to rapidly help confront the emerging worldwide coronavirus crisis. Linked below is an overview document (a downloadable pdf) summarizing the scientific rationale for developing Brilacidin as a potential COVID-19 treatment, both as an intravenous medication and as a possible vaccine. “Background and Scientific Rationale for Brilacidin as a Potential Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Treatment” (March 1, 2020) http://www.ipharminc.com/s/IPIX-Brilacidin-Defensin-Mimetics-COVID-19-Overview-March-1-2020-update.pdf Defensins are small antimicrobial peptides expressed widely in the animal kingdom that serve as the first line of defense against foreign invasion of the body. Defensin-based therapeutics—of which Brilacidin is the leading example, and the most advanced drug candidate among this class currently in clinical testing—represent an attractive possible intervention to combat the coronavirus given innate and multifaceted immunomodulatory properties. Defensins exhibit a number of distinct and highly favorable therapeutic characteristics: anti-bacterial, anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal, anti-biofilm, anti-cancer, and antiviral. Brilacidin, a mimetic of defensins, was computationally designed to be smaller (1/10th the size), more stable, more potent (by a 100-fold) and more selective (by a 1000-fold) than natural defensins, a type of antimicrobial peptide, so as to overcome most shortcomings (e.g., degradation, toxicity, malabsorption, high-cost of manufacturing) that have complicated their clinical development. The antiviral properties of natural defensins and their synthetic mimics are actively being studied by virologists the world over, with newer understandings elucidating their...