Durham-based BioCryst Pharmaceuticals might have a Zika bazooka on its hands.
At least, the company’s experimental broad spectrum antiviral drug BCX4430 saved the lives of a batch of lab mice whose immune systems were deliberately suppressed before they were infected with Zika virus.
And today the company announced it’s rolling out the news at a show-and-tell during a World Health Organization (WHO) meeting this week in Geneva, Switzerland. Scientists around the world are scrambling to find a way to halt the global spread of Zika, a mosquito-borne illness believed to cause severe birth defects in babies born to women who contract the infection during pregnancy.
Researchers at Utah State University started injecting the immune-weakened mice with BCX4430 four hours before exposing them to the Zika virus, and continued the drug injections twice a day for 28 days. Two groups of mice were given different dose levels of the drug.
The lucky mice got the standard dose of the drug. Seven out of eight survived the whole 28 days. Those who got the low doses of BCX4430 survived a median of 23 days. Meanwhile, median survival was 14 and 17 days among the “control groups” that got either a placebo or ribavirin treatment. Ribavirin, the first anti-viral drug to hit the market, is used in the U.S. to treat respiratory syncytial virus and hepatitis C virus infection.
The study was conducted at the Logan, Utah, campus as part of the ongoing Animal Models of Infectious Disease Program at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. This program provides in vivo screening services for researchers, as part of a broader suite of preclinical services supported by NIAID. These services are part of NIAID’s infrastructure for responding to emerging infectious diseases, such as Zika virus, and allow for research to be quickly directed to support immediate public health needs.
BCX4430 is a broad spectrum antiviral that is being tested in a phase one clinical safety and pharmacology study in healthy subjects. BCX4430 has demonstrated survival benefits in nonclinical studies against a variety of serious pathogens, including Ebola, Marburg, and Yellow Fever viruses. Since September 2013, NIAID has supported BioCryst in developing BCX4430 as a therapeutic for Ebola and Marburg viruses.
In March 2015, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) awarded BioCryst a contract for up to an additional $35 million for the continued development of BCX4430 as a potential treatment for filoviruses.
BioCryst worked for 28 years to bring its first drug to market. In late December, 2014, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved its intravenous flu treatment, RAPIVAB, as the first new drug on the United States market to treat existing flu infections. Fortunately for BioCryst, the company was already marketing the drug in Japan and Korea under the name Peramivir.
