NanoViricides COVID-19 Treatment Candidate Found Effective Against Coronavirus Variants In Lab Study

Shares of NanoViricides Inc NNVC, a developer of antiviral therapies based on a novel nanomedicines technology, are higher Monday.

What Happened: NanoViricides said its pan-Coronavirus COVID-19 drug candidate, NV-CoV-2, was found to be effective against SARS-CoV-2 in a standard cell culture pseudovirion assay.

"We have now demonstrated that NV-CoV-2 is highly effective in cell cultures against SARS-CoV-2, human coronavirus NL-63, and human coronavirus 229E, all very different human coronaviruses," the company said.

This underlines the broad spectrum pan-coronavirus activity of NV-CoV-2 and its ability to remain active against coronavirus variants, it added.

The pseudovirion study also showed that NV-CoV-2 neutralizes the virus particles themselves, outside of the cells, validating NanoViricides' design mechanism.

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Why It's Important: With a few vaccines and treatments available under emergency use authorization against the novel coronavirus, the thrust now is on treatments that can be effective against emerging variants.

NanoViricides' NV-CoV-2 fits in the bill, and if the company can take its candidate into the clinics and successfully prove its efficacy and safety in human trials, it has a promising product in the pipeline.

"We believe that NV-CoV-2 may help end the pandemic if it is shown to be effective in human clinical trials," said Anil Diwan, chairman and president of NanoViricides.

The company said it is now preparing submission documents to enable the initiation of human clinical trials.

NNVC Price Action: NanoViricides shares were up 4.58% at $4.57 Monday morning.

Photo by Julia Koblitz on Unsplash