Benitec Biopharma (ASX: BLT; OTCPK: BTEBY), a biopharmaceutical company focused on providing potentially curative therapies with its proprietary gene-silencing technology called ddRNAi or "expressed RNAi," today announced that the fourth patient in the company's Phase I/IIa dose escalation clinical trial of its lead program TT-034 for treating hepatitis C was dosed at the Duke Clinical Research Unit. This is the second patient to be dosed in Cohort Two, with the third and final patient in Cohort Two well advanced in their preparation for dosing.
As previously announced, the parallel dosing of these patients follows a positive recommendation from the DSMB's review of the safety data from the first patient in this cohort.
All three patients in Cohort Two receive a dose of 1.25 x 10^11 vg/kg of TT-034, a concentration that is a half-log higher than the dose administered in Cohort One. This dose level is still below the concentration expected to inhibit hepatitis C viral replication and therefore data from Cohort Two are expected to serve primarily as a further safety assessment.
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