Benitec’s pain program validated by independent study

Benitec Ltd (ASX:BLT), a world leader in RNA-based gene silencing for human therapeutics, announced that China-based researchers have proved the concept behind Benitec's in house neuropathic pain program.

This independent research was published in the prestigious international scientific journal Human Gene Therapy*.

Using a form of Benitec's gene silencing technology in a rat model, the researchers silenced a key gene associated with pain and achieved a significant reduction in pain without side effects.

“Currently, treatment of neuropathic pain is still a challenge, as it is insensitive to traditional pain drugs and surgical interventions,” the researchers state in their paper. They concluded, “These results support the potential use of shRNA expression vectors as a gene therapy approach to neuropathic pain..."

Dr Peter French, CEO of Benitec said, “Remarkably the independent researchers on this study utilized an almost identical experimental design to that currently being used in our own in-house program. Their finding of significant efficacy with no adverse effects in the preclinical model has the potential to substantially accelerate our efforts in bringing a novel pain therapeutic to the clinic supported by our dominant patent position in the underlying DNA-directed RNAi technology."

*Reference:

Wangyuan Zou, Zongbin Song, Qulian Guo, Chang Liu, Zhong Zhang and Yanfeng Zhang. “Intrathecal lentiviral-mediated RNA interference targeting PKC attenuates chronic constriction injury-induced neuropathic pain in rats.” Human Gene Therapy. April 2011, 22(4): 465-475. doi:10.1089/hum.2010.207.

This article is available at: http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/hum.2010.207