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New Technology Shows Promise Against Bioagents
Pharmaceutical company AVI BioPharma in clinical testing has found that “antisense” technology has been able to block the cellular mechanisms that anthrax and ricin use to induce lethal toxicity, the company announced last week (see GSN, Oct. 4). The company has also been able to combat the Ebola and Marburg viruses in these trials, according to a company press statement. The clinical trials have been partially funded by the U.S. Defense Department and are being conducted with the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. The trials were conducted on mice, guinea pigs and nonhuman primates. Early studies of mice showed that when given the company’s Neugene antisense technology, almost all survived exposure to lethal levels of anthrax spores. More extensive tests are planned exploring efficacy against anthrax infection. Tests also showed the Neugene technology to be effective against Marburg, with a high survival rate when Marburg genes were targeted. Tests also found that the antisense agents were virus-specific, meaning treatments for Ebola would not provide protection against the Marburg virus. In the past, attempts to treat Ebola in all three species have found little success, according to the release (AVI BioPharma release, Oct. 17).
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