On Mar. 2, 2020, Innovation Pharma provided the scientific rationale and clinical development perspectives for Brilacidin, the Company’s defensin mimetic drug candidate, as a potential novel coronavirus (COVID-19) treatment.

Notably, Brilacidin was one of the few drugs targeting COVID-19 that has been tested in humans in Phase 2 clinical trials for other clinical indications, providing an established safety and efficacy profile, thereby potentially enabling it to rapidly help confront the emerging worldwide coronavirus crisis.

Defensins are small antimicrobial peptides expressed widely in the animal kingdom that serve as the first line of defense against foreign invasion of the body.

Defensin-based therapeutics—of which Brilacidin is the leading example, and the most advanced drug candidate among this class currently in clinical testing—represent an attractive possible intervention to combat the coronavirus given innate and multifaceted immunomodulatory properties. Defensins exhibit a number of distinct and highly favorable therapeutic characteristics: anti-bacterial, anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal, anti-biofilm, anti-cancer, and antiviral.

Brilacidin, a mimetic of defensins, was computationally designed to be smaller (1/10th the size), more stable, more potent (by a 100-fold) and more selective (by a 1000-fold) than natural defensins, a type of antimicrobial peptide, so as to overcome most shortcomings (e.g., degradation, toxicity, malabsorption, high-cost of manufacturing) that have complicated their clinical development. The antiviral properties of natural defensins and their synthetic mimics are actively being studied by virologists the world over, with newer understandings elucidating their direct mechanisms of action against non-enveloped and enveloped viruses alike, along with their role in the regulation of inflammation and chemoattraction.