Thursday, February 9, 2012

NanoViricides nabs $5M to take flu fighter to IND

By Rodney H. Brown

NanoViricides Inc., a Connecticut biotech focused on nanomaterials for antiviral therapy, has closed out a $5 million financing with a $2.5 million tranche from Florida firm Seaside 88 LP.

Publicly traded NanoViricides said in a release that the company had filed a shelf registration statement in April 2010 that would allow it to raise as much as $40 million by targeted stock placements from time to time. The first half of the $5 million fundraise happened in November, also coming from Seaside 88.

West Haven-based NanoViricides said in the release that this latest fundraise gives the company “more than 24 months of cash in hand,” and will take it to the point of filing an investigational new drug application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for its influenza therapeutics program, FluCide.

Seaside 88 has now invested a total of $20 million of the $40 million shelf registration amount into NanoViricides (OTC BB: NNVC.OB) since it filed the S-3 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in April 2010.

NanoViricides announced back in September that it was getting ready to file the IND for FluCide, then known under its development name as NV-INF-1. The company stated that FluCide should be effective against most strains and types of influenzas, including novel epidemic influenza strains such as the one encountered in 2009-2010 (the “swine flu”); seasonal flu such as H1N1, H3N2; highly pathogenic types such as H7N and H9N; and highly lethal types such as the “bird flu” or H5N1.

In August, NanoViricides reported findings that its lead anti-HIV drug candidate has a long-term, anti-HIV effect with a much shorter dosing regimen than standard highly active antiretroviral treatment (HAART) triple-drug cocktail therapy in an animal trial.