AVI BioPharma, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVII), a developer of RNA-based drugs, announced today that it has received expanded contract funding of approximately $11.5 million from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency's (DTRA) Transformational Medical Technologies Initiative (TMTI) to support development of the Investigational New Drug (IND) data package for its candidate drug, AVI-7012, to treat Junin virus infection. To date, the United States Department of Defense (DoD) has contracted with AVI for work potentially worth up to $45 million for the development of AVI's RNA-based drug candidates to treat Ebola, Marburg and Junin virus infections (AVI-6002, AVI-6003 and AVI-7012, respectively).
"AVI has recently been able to confirm the impressive and dose-related survival of drug-treated non-human primates in large dose titration studies for Ebola and Marburg virus infections, which were carried out in collaboration with the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID)," said Dr. Patrick Iverson, Senior Vice President for Strategic Alliances at AVI. "Importantly, these studies allowed us to unequivocally demonstrate the sequence-specific nature of the protection afforded by our drug candidates."
AVI has received a 'safe to proceed' allowance from the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for IND applications for clinical safety trials of its two lead products to treat Ebola and Marburg virus infections. These INDs represent the first TMTI supported drug candidates targeting bioterrorism agents to receive FDA IND allowance.