Aphios Corporation announced today that it has been granted US Patent No. 11,981,174 for CCR5 and CD4 siRNA-targeted therapeutics for treatment of HIV-1 and other diseases.

More than 35 million people have died from AIDS, and 37 million people are living with HIV worldwide. In the United States, an estimated 1.2 million people are currently living with HIV and approximately 40,000 infections occur each year. There is no vaccine against HIV, and current medications have multiple long-term adverse effects such as: (i) rapid emergence of pools of drug-specific resistance HIV mutants that are not responsive to treatment; (ii) drug toxicity; (iii) drug/pill burden that often cause non-adherence; and (iv) high lifetime economic costs.

Therefore, the need for alternative therapeutic approaches/strategies remain a critical challenge to global public health. RNA-based therapeutics hold great promise in the progress towards alternative HIV treatment. Specifically, small interfering ribonucleic acid (hereinafter referred to as siRNA) has widely been demonstrated to protect hosts from viruses, making this evolutionary conserved double-stranded RNA an important candidate for therapeutic intervention. But full harnessing of RNA as therapeutics is significantly impeded by the lack of appropriate delivery strategies that ensure RNA stability and potency in humans.

In this invention, novel siRNAs were designed to downregulate CCR5, CD4 and CXCR4 genes, based on an analysis of all known alternative transcripts for each gene from both human and monkey (Macaca mulatta) genomes. SuperFluids are used to nanoencapsulate siRNA in phospholipid liposomes and lipid nanoparticles (nanosomes) for the improved delivery of siRNA and other biologics to diseased cells. Elements of the invention also pertain to targeting nanosomes containing specific siRNA sequences to cells expressing those receptors on the cell surface by coating them with specific ligands. Nanosomal formulation of siRNA and small molecules offers a potential avenue to improving the efficacy of siRNA constructs.

About Aphios Corporation:

Aphios (www.aphios.com) is an emerging growth, green biotechnology company developing enabling technology platforms to improve drug discovery and manufacturing, nanotechnology drug delivery and pathogenic safety. Based on these platforms, Aphios is developing enhanced therapeutics to improve quality-of-life and treat chronic diseases including cancers, infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, and central nervous system disorders in an environmentally sustainable manner.

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