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Chinese Company Develops Fusion Inhibitor
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Agence France Presse
(07.11.05)
A Chinese pharmaceutical maker has developed a new HIV drug that aims to block the virus from entering cells, the China Daily reported today. FusoGen Pharmaceuticals is currently testing the drug, a fusion inhibitor, in clinical trials. Zhou Genfa, FusoGen's chairperson, said the drug is modeled after the US-developed Fuzeon - the first drug in a new class of fusion inhibitors - but employs a different molecular modeling. The drug, which has been registered as a new medicine with China's State Food and Drug Administration, will likely hit the market at the end of next year and will be priced "significantly" lower than Fuzeon, which can cost $20,000 per patient per year, said Zhou.
http://www.fusogen.com/
FusoGen was founded in China in 2002, and is dedicated in the development of patented therapeutics in fighting serious virus infections, such as HIV, HBV, HCV, etc.
The first drug candidate under development at FusoGen is an HIV fusion inhibitor, called Sifuvirtide,which was designed based on the structure of HIV gp41, and has 20-fold better IC50 than T-20 by cell fusion assay. The patents have been issued in China and in USA, and patent applications in EU and in Japan are pending. The preclinical studies were completed, and demonstrated that Sifuvirtide has excellent safety profile, and very strong inhibitory activity against HIV infection. At present Sifuvirtide is in Phase I clinical trials in China. FusoGen is also developing inhibitors against HBV which is the most serious infection in China with 120 million positives.
FusoGen rapidly becomes one of the leading biotech companies in China by taking advantages of its advanced technology and cost effectivity for drug development in China, as well as expanding China market.
A comparison between Sifuvirtide and T-20
Sifuvirtide has the following three advantages over its congeneric drug T-20 (co-developed by Roche and Trimeris, and approved in USA and Europe in 2003):
--Structure-based drug design
T-20 was discovered through a random screening, while Sifuvirtide was designed based on HIV gp41 structural information.
--20-fold better in efficacy
According to cell-based assay, Sifuvirtide has 20-fold better inhibition activity than T-20.
-- Lower dosage
Due to much better inhibition activity, lower dosage will very likely be used.
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