AVI BioPharma's peptide-conjugated PMO chemistry to be discussed at two upcoming scientific meetings

AVI BioPharma, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVII), a developer of RNA-based drugs, today announced that Hong Moulton, Ph.D., Director of Discovery Research, will give oral presentations highlighting improved analogues of AVI's phosphorodiamidate morpholino oligomer (PMO) chemistry at two upcoming scientific meetings.

At the 3rd Intracellular Delivery of Therapeutic Molecules: From Bench to Bedside, taking place in Montpellier, France, Dr. Moulton will give a presentation titled "Targeted Gene Expression in vivo: Cell Penetrating Peptides Make Antisense Work," as part of the session on applications of delivery systems on Sept. 2, 2009. This conference, designed to bring together leading scientists in the field of cell-penetrating peptides and non viral delivery systems, is celebrating the 15 year anniversary of the discovery of cell-penetrating peptides.

At the Targeted Drug Delivery Conference, taking place in Lausanne, Switzerland, Dr. Mouton will present on "Cell Penetrating Peptidomorpholino Conjugates" on Sept. 3, as part of the peptide-bases delivery session.

Both presentations focus on AVI's next generation chemistry, peptide-conjugated PMO (PPMO), which improves delivery to nuclei of muscle cells and so is particularly applicable to drugs that work by exon skipping. With appropriate dosing, PPMO compounds restored dystrophin to nearly normal levels in skeletal and cardiac muscles in a mouse model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy without inducing toxicity or an immune response against the new dystrophin expressed. As a result, force generation and function of both skeletal and cardiac muscles were improved.