VirionHealth receives funding for development of a new class of biological antivirals

Biotechnology company, VirionHealth, has won non-dilutive funding from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to support development of its new class of biological antivirals.

The funding, worth up to $4.2 million, comes under DARPA’s INTERfering and Co-Evolving Prevention and Therapy (INTERCEPT) programme, which seeks to develop a novel approach that uses evolution to defeat rapidly mutating pathogens and thus keep pace with fast-evolving targets.

Dr Jeffrey Almond, chairman of VirionHealth, said: “We are delighted to receive this funding and to be working with DARPA to harness the therapeutic potential of defective interfering viruses and accelerate the progress of our novel antiviral programme into the clinic.”

“This new funding recognises the significant potential of VirionHealth’s approach in treating respiratory tract infections,” added Professor Nigel Dimmock, scientific co-founder at VirionHealth. “Building on innovative work at the University of Warwick, we are the only company to have successfully developed a therapeutically active defective interfering virus.”

VirionHealth’s new class of biological antivirals acts by outcompeting replication of infectious viruses to both prevent and treat viral infections. It aims to exploit this technology in order to develop a broad-spectrum therapy, thereby potentially simplifying and accelerating treatment by removing the need for differential diagnosis.

Furthermore, it is reported that this technology is less susceptible to resistance than other approaches due to its viral out-competition abilities and innate immune system stimulation.