NanoViricides, Inc. (NYSE American.:NNVC) (the "Company"), a clinical stage global leader in broad-spectrum antiviral nanomedicines, reports today that it has now obtained a right of first refusal (ROFR) for all antiviral drug developments from the R&D firm TheraCour Pharma, Inc. ("TheraCour").
NanoViricides has signed a broad Memorandum of Understanding Agreement (MoU) with TheraCour encompassing all antiviral drugs developments on September 23, 2024, an important step that provides the Company certain intellectual property rights for developing treatments against any viral infections.
NV-387, the Company's lead drug, is proving to be a revolutionary drug that has demonstrated strong effectiveness, surpassing existing drugs, against a number of distinctly different types of viruses in animal studies. With this MoU in place, the increasing number of antiviral indications of a broad-spectrum drug such as NV-387 can be quickly and easily discovered and added by the Company to its portfolio of drugs in its development pipeline.
In addition to NV-387, certain "Trojan Horse" drugs that can completely cure most viral infections by attacking the virus lifecycle in multiple ways have been developed by the Company. This MoU expands NanoViricides Inc's abilities to opportunistically and rapidly develop such drugs to treat viral infections of public health importance, even for those viruses that don't exist today and cannot be predicted.
The new MoU provides NanoViricides with the ability to rapidly progress in such new endeavors and provides the important intellectual property rights to further develop multiple drug candidates towards a multitude of antiviral applications, many of which may have been previously considered to be intractable.
The MoU also codifies the process by which the two parties negotiate licenses to specific antiviral fields. As in the past, a license would not be restricted to a single drug, but rather would encompass all drugs that can be conceivably applicable with the R&D performed against the licensed field of antiviral application.
The revolutionary nanoviricide technology resulting in host-mimetic, direct-acting antiviral drugs is opening up a new era of treating viral infections just as penicillin opened up a new era and revolutionized the treatment of bacterial infections, enabling "one drug - many bugs" model instead of the current "one bug - one drug" model. NV-387, an example of the capabilities of nanoviricide technology, was developed in 2020 in response to the COVID pandemic and has completed a Phase I human clinical trial successfully. The Company is now planning for NV-387 to enter into Phase II clinical trials for evaluation of its efficacy against several viral diseases that include RSV, Influenza, Bird Flu, COVID, as well as MPOX/Smallpox infections.
