Hepatitis C

There are 3.2 million hepatitis C patients in the USA and 170 million worldwide.  A significant proportion of these patients will develop cirrhosis and will eventually die of liver failure.  The current standard of care involves the combined administration of interferon and ribavirin.  Many patients are not candidates or cannot tolerate this treatment because of its severe toxicity. Current drugs in development have been associated with several problems including rapid viral resistance, significant toxicities and poor pharmacokinetics.  Our drug has the potential to solve these problems.

Our drug has been shown to be a potent entry inhibitor of HCV into hepatocytes.  It has potent and well tolerated activity in vivo in the HCV chimeric mouse model and is also active against numerous HCV genotypes in vitro.  The protective activity of our drug against HCV infection in vivo demonstrates its potential usefulness in protecting the livers of HCV positive transplant patients from re-infection.  This problem is a serious unmet medical need for which no treatment is currently available. This in vivo activity also suggests our drug could be useful to treat chronic hepatitis C.