NanoViricides granted key U.S. patent

NanoViricides (OTCBB:NNVC) said the U.S. Patents and Trademarks office on Monday has granted the company a patent, on which the company’s technology is based.

The U.S. Patent No. 8,173,764 relates to "Solubilization and targeted delivery of drugs with self-assembling amphiphilic polymers" and will be issued on May 8.

The company said that the issuance notification was received from the U.S. Patents and Trademarks office last week.

The patent term is expected to last until October 1, 2026, with the possibility of further extensions in compensation for time spent in clinical trials.

Additionally, the patent covers a broad range of biomimetic technologies.

NanoViricides will hold exclusive and perpetual worldwide licenses to these claims for a broad range of antiviral applications and diseases.

"These biomimetic features allow us to make the nanoviricide look like a host-cell membrane to the virus, with the goal of deceiving the virus to land on it and thereupon destroy itself," said Anil Diwan president of NanoViricides.

"This patent establishes a fundamentally new direction in developing biomimetic approaches," Diwan added.

Meanwhile, patents have also been issued in New Zealand and South Africa, and as a regional patent valid in 16 other African states. Further issuances are slated in Europe, and in many other countries around the world.

The patents are being issued to the founders of the company, and have been assigned to AllExcel Inc. which has transferred the intellectual property to TheraCour Pharma.

In a statement, chief executive Eugene Seymour said: "Based on the tremendous effectiveness that our NanoViricides drugs have shown against a large number of viral diseases in several very stringent animal models this technology spells a fundamental change in how medicines will be developed in the future."

The development stage company designs drugs to specifically attack virus particles and to dismantle them.

NanoViricides drug pipeline includes candidates to treat diseases like H5N1 bird flu, HIV, hepatitis C, rabies, dengue fever and the Ebola virus.