jsr

Also, http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.p...seases/id_33450

The warehouse hard by the railroad tracks isn’t the stereotypical headquarters for a cutting-edge company hatching big-time breakthrough medicines. There’s no fancy logo sign, no sweeping glass-and-metal entrance area, no headset-wearing assistants.

But this biomedical outfit has millions in the bank. It’s just spending wisely as it develops the Venus Flytrap of antiviral drugs.

The company, NanoViricides, Inc., raised $10 million last year, including a December infusion of $2.5 million. Its quest: develop a biodegradable setup based on polymers that takes advantage of the way viruses succeed, by binding to a healthy cell. The treatment poses as a regular cell, then wraps up the viral particle.

By breaking up the virus, and preventing it from successfully binding to healthy cells, the therapy stops the disease in its tracks, just like a Venus Flytrap ensares a bug.

“When the virus binds, it opens up and grabs it,” said founder Anil R. Diwan, who began developing the his idea at New Haven’s Science Park and moved it to West Haven to save money on overhead.

Diwan and his 10-person staff made a point of pinching pennies on costs that don’t have to do directly with drug development. Its Wood Street building, for example, had pigeons—and their droppings—inside when Diwan first moved in about 10 years ago.

“We’ve spent about $14 million,” Diwan said. “That contrasts with companies that are developing just one or two drugs, and they’re spending $25 million a quarter.”

NanoViricides is one of countless companies betting on the promise of nanotechnology. That’s the science of making super-products—like medicines, bike frames and sunscreen—out of super-small particles. The pharmaceutical field regards nanotech as a huge opportunity to fight disease from the inside out.

NanoViricides is working on therapies based on the new concept for several diseases, including HIV, influenza and Dengue viruses. The company’s flu drug has consistently outperformed the leading drug, called Tamiflu, according to Diwan. Animal testing on eye drops that treat a nasty form of pink eye has been successful, and the company is developing a skin cream to fight herpes.

The company is close to starting the process—usually long and expensive, and occasionally difficult—of getting Food and Drug Administration approval for clinical testing in humans, the first step in bringing any drug to market.

Diwan, currently the chairman and president of NanoViricides, may be headed for a big payday if and when his treatments come to the marketplace. But it’s been a long road already, and the journey is far from finished.

“The initial discovery of what materials will actually work took a long, long time,” he said.

For the first few years, money was a big problem. Federal grants, the backbone of academic research funding, are cyclical, never guaranteed. Investors promised big numbers, then disappeared. And nobody wants to lend laboratory time on credit, so progress was slow.

Diwan likes to concentrate on studies outside the test tube, which are a better indicator of the effectiveness of a treatment—but also cost more. And some of the company’s initial projects focused on diseases, such as rabies and the Ebola and Marburg viruses, that generally don’t attract a lot of funding.

“With small amounts of money, you are able to do only small amounts of work,” Diwan said.

Last year, he said, was the first time the company raised what he considers a good amount of money: $10 million. This kind of cash flow is enabling NanoViricides’ leadership to start thinking about a production facility for the therapies, a key long-term part of the FDA approval process. The agency places a particular emphasis on the ability to make a consistent product.

The company is probably going to look outside Connecticut for manufacturing, breaking a long streak of Diwan’s. He’s originally from India, but landed at Rice University to complete his Ph.D. in biochemical engineering.

Diwan got a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Connecticut, then a job at Eastman Kodak Co. in New Haven. Then there was the move to Science Park, and finally West Haven.

He started tinkering with the technology that later became the “nanoviricide” by working on gene therapies in the oncology field. But viruses seemed ripe for something that was “simpler and better” than the existing treatments, Diwan said.

There was also the influence of Eugene Seymour, now the company’s CEO, who wanted to help bring in funding. Seymour was interested in viruses like HIV and influenza, so NanoViricides emerged with that focus.

The 2005 bird flu epidemic gave influenza research a new urgency. NanoViricides was able to test its therapy in Vietnam, where Diwan could get access to the virus. It worked, boosting the company’s stock price and paving the way for the consistent push for innovation that has followed.

The treatment differs for each targeted disease, Diwan said, but what came first was a focus on how virus particles always look for cells with which to bind, regardless of the virus’ makeup.

“What is staying constant? The ability to bind to the cells,” he said. “That’s where we start from.”

The delivery module, called a polymeric micelle, can fold at will. So the viral particle becomes encapsulated. In addition to breaking the virus apart, they will exit the body, taking the virus with them, Diwan said.

These kinds of treatments—using engineered nanoparticles to either carry medicine right to diseased areas, as with some cancer treatments, or to destroy viruses—are the bulwark of nanomedicine. Diwan points out that in a sense, nanomedicine is nothing new, since vaccines work on the same super-small level, and a lifesaving synthetic drug such as insulin is similarly engineered.

What’s different now, he said, is that scientists are creating machines out of these tiny materials, little engines that can search and destroy. There’s also still lots of what Diwan cals “low-lying fruit,” such as topical applications that use nanoparticles.

“I should have thought about skin creams about five years ago,” he said, chuckling.

Did a little digging around on ADVFN iHUB -

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_...age_id=56763327

Patrick Cox: NanoViricides Demonstrates 15X Killing Power of Market-leading Flu Drug

This is huge, folks. In a rational world, the FDA would simply approve FluCide, the leading anti-influenza drug by NanoViricides, Inc. ( OTCBB: NNVC) right now and rush it to market. Further results of a third-party validation were made public Monday morning. They are stunning. Because they are written in "science speak," it may not be immediately obvious.

Previously, I've reported that new tests of NanoViricides' tweaked nanotech FluCide therapy had vastly increased the survival rate of mice given lethal infections of influenza. Roche's Tamiflu, the market leader, increased life spans to an average of 7.8 days. NanoViricides' FluCide increased it to 18.1 days.

The new information, however, confirms that FluCide works by killing viruses. Obviously, this is important because it reduces the stress that viruses put on the body. TamiFlu only halved the viral load. FluCide killed 15 times the viruses. This is critical because it means that you could kill more simply by increasing the dose of FluCide in the initial treatment or in subsequent doses. FluCide is, in fact, a cure for influenza.

Think about what this means. TamiFlu's sales have gone down somewhat recently as certain viruses have developed immunities and concern about side effects has grown. Still, however, Roche's sales of the drug this year are estimated at 1 billion Swiss Francs, which translates roughly into US$1 billion.

Let me review some of the high points of what makes NanoViricides' technology so uniquely amazing. First, these nano-sized particles do not act inside the cell and are not metabolized by the liver, which is the process that produces most of the unexpected side effects that derail promising drugs. Even in massive doses, they have never produced side effects.

This is because they are not drugs in the classical sense. They are a fusion of polymer nanoparticles with organic ligands. These ligands, found via in silico supercomputer 3D simulation, imitate the cellular locks that viruses have keys for. Viruses that encounter these nano/bio machines "think" they have found a cell and attack them. They enter these nanoparticles and then, they are harmlessly dismantled and disposed of.

Normally, a drug winding its way to market has one huge cloud casting doubt on its future. It is the consequences of human testing. Dr. Joseph Kim, the brilliant CEO of DNA vaccine company Inovio Pharmaceuticals (AMEX: INO) once told me a great biotech saying: Rats lie. Monkeys exaggerate.

This is true because most drugs interact with the entire human metabolism, which is vastly more complicated than most animals' metabolisms. Most people don't know it, but we've cured cancer completely in many of the animals used for medical tests. Those cures, however, have produced unexpected side effects in humans and are therefore unusable.

NanoViricides' technology doesn't interact with the metabolism. It doesn't enter human cells, which is why it may not work on the few virus that can hide in cells, such as hepatitis C. It is a tiny quasi-robot that fights one-on-one with viruses no matter where it encounters them. If it works in a test tube full of infected blood, and it does, it will work in a blood vessel. It is a true revolution in medicine that will be memorialized in medical texts just as Edward Jenner's discovery of vaccinations is today.

Am I saying I have a crystal ball and can tell you nothing will go wrong with this technology? Well, obviously I would be a liar if I were. Still, this is as close to a grossly-underpriced sure thing as I have ever seen. I have a few more pressing items on NanoViricides.

One is that the FDA's approval bar for TamiFlu was very low. If you feel like doing a little data mining to convince yourself this is true, go to the FDA's Website. Type Tamiflu in the search field and then click on the top drug type, "capsule."

If you dig around, you can access all the approval letters and internal FDA memos for approved drugs. They tell you a lot about the types of clinical and animal testing requirements that the FDA has for particular kinds of drug.

If you look at Tamiflu, using the link I included above, you find that Roche did 2 pivotal studies during flu season, one in the US (374 subjects) and one in South America (475 subjects) using people 18-65 years old. They did smaller studies later to increase the age range and look at high-risk group such as those suffering from chronic cardiac or pulmonary disease. They weren't asked to repeat any clinical studies, however.

They also performed about 15 studies in mice and rats. Various FDA memos describe the criteria they used to grant approval. The point, however, is that that Tamiflu only reduced the duration of influenza by 1.3 days, but the FDA still approved it. This is a very low bar and it bodes well for NanoViricides' FluCide.

It's possible, of course, that Roche could pressure the FDA to delay approval of FluCide, but another influenza epidemic is inevitable and NanoViricides is going to step up to the plate when it comes. Anybody who blocks them will have a big public relations Problem.

Dengue Serotypes that Cause Hemorrhagic Fever Found in Florida

The first case of "locally acquired" dengue has appeared an hour and a half east of me, in Miami. That means that mosquitoes carrying the dengue virus are breeding in the verdant South Florida wetlands. This is going to be a problem and NanoViricides has the cure. Remember, the mortality rate of reinfection from one of the other three dengue serotypes produces hemorrhagic fever with a 20 percent mortality rate.

We know, in fact, that these other strains have already popped up in Florida. Let me extract part of the Palm Beach Post story I've linked above.

"'This is a big deal,' said Lillian Rivera, administrator of the Miami-Dade Health Department.

"'We have not had a locally acquired case of dengue fever since the 1950s,' said Dr. Fermin Leguen, the department's chief epidemiologist.

"The victim, described only as a man who had not traveled outside Miami-Dade County for more than two weeks, was briefly hospitalized but has fully recovered, Rivera said. His case was confirmed by laboratory tests.

"Health officials said they don't know where the man acquired the disease. It was a different strain from the one that has caused 57 locally acquired cases in Key West and one in Broward County."

So we have multiple strains breeding in Florida. Storms blow mosquitoes around down here like living clouds. Dengue hemorrhagic fever is coming. NanoViricides already has the cure.

Gold broke 1350! Not happy .

Interesting GLD price action ... de ja vu?

Blimey - gold just shot up by about 2% in USD, and GBP.

 

Any ideas why?

It hit the 144 Day moving average. Money is also flowing out of stocks, so thats pushing the dollar up I guess.

Yes

SPX pierced 1300 today too!

I took a small nibble at the close. If we get a hammer bottom tomorrow, I'll be satisfied it's THE bottom!

Only a couple of dollars away from the 144d ma !

Thanks for that educated view D.S.

Dr SEYMOUR sold (disposed?) 2.5m of his 6m holding a few weeks ago.

http://holdings.nasdaq.com/asp/Form4.asp?F...mbol=NNVC#codes

Although these shares were NOT sold on the open market ... So maybe to his wife or kids?

However, I would still like to know the full details of this transaction. A director reporting disposition of nearly half his holdings should raise some concerns!

Hey CP,

 

Yes I used to work in the pharma industry so this area is of particular interest to me. Interestingly one of my contacts who leads dengue research at one of the worlds largest pharma companies reckons nanoviricides won't work. He didn't say why not so maybe he is just feeling the heat of the competition. He was very surprised to learn that Eva Harris, the worlds leading researcher on dengue, is working with NNVC so I'm not sure he fully understands what they have.

 

In any case as we both know either this thing works and we blast off to $100 or it doesn't and we go to zero.

 

I bought at 58 cents and sold at $2.10 to get my stake and profit. Riding a reasonable amount of free shares now so no big shakes if it goes off the board. This is my lottery ticket stock.

You will have to excuse my pharma ignorance. Their drugs have shown to be more effective in animal studies than other stuff, for example tamiflu. What do you foresee will go wrong in human trials?

What is different in human biology, to mice?

As for your friend, I would be interested to hear why he thinks Nano's Dengue drug will fail.

As I said, excuse my pharma ignorance, this is a subject I have near no knowledge about.

It doesn't feel like this stock is doing much, but interestingly, it is in a very volatile uptrend if you look on a long term chart.

Doctor Solar, are you of a medical/pharmaceuitcal background by any chance?

Yep he has been on board the good ship NNVC a while now. He pumped it just after the previous press release a few weeks back which set this thing running. He then followed up on this latest press release which has helped push it along here.

 

From a trading perspective you could usually buy the news wait for the Cox letter to follow usually a day later then sell in to the resulting strength which usually follows.

 

I'm still hoping this thing is the real deal tho...

Cox's pumping will wane. We need to see institutional buying. i.e the type where it rallies on no news and pumpers newsletters!

Now, do I buy some more to establish a trading position??

Yep looking good. Patrick Cox picked up on the latest PR and sent it out to all his subscribers which almost certainly helped here.

He's already punped this before, hasn't he?

Held up nicely today on a broad market fall.

Well we are certainly headed in the right direction again

The entry price is now $1.53

 

A steady stream of news like this will help too:

 

NanoViricides, Inc. (OTC BB: NNVC.OB) (the "Company") reports that its optimized FluCide™ drug candidates achieved dramatic reduction in viral load within the lungs of animals infected with a lethal dose of H1N1 influenza virus.

Yes indeed!

The stock has triggered a weekly buy signal on Allans trend system. I have been contemplating adding a little more, to give me a trading position too?

Sorry folks make that a $1.41 entry fee! Any of you guys still on board this thing?

 

I'm riding my free shares having taken back my stake plus profit in the 2.10 area.

Yes, me! lets hope we break $3 this time.

Going slightly off topic here -

The day NNVC hit it's low, I felt this had to be the bottom!

Why?

Hammer bottom candlestick formation

Bounced of a major long term support

Abnormally high volume

I had the bright idea to find this setup in other stocks. Currently using Stockfetcher.com.

So far, results are neutral. You couldn't just blindly enter a trade using this technique. I guess fundamentals would have to be considered too, so backtesting this strategy is not easy. There's also the issue of finding the optimal settings too.

Fair enough, however, sometimes people just need to be told. This was one such occasion.

 

 

 

 

If folks here had followed my path with this one they would have got their stake back plus a chunky profit and still have skin in the game and be riding a healthy position for free.

 

As I have said many times on here, this is my lottery ticket stock. Either their cides work or they dont. Either we go to allallans target of $100 or we go to zero. So once you have successfully navigated this thing such that you are riding it for free just sit back and see where it takes you. If it goes to zero you still have your initial capital and hopefully a profit too. Sounds pretty good to me.

 

Now if you are turning up looking to get in now after it has blasted off from 41 cents to $2 well it might be a shade more tricky to get yourself in to that position. And of course if bad results come out at the wrong time them you are sunk. That was always the "gamble" with this one.

Don't get me wrong, I first brought at 55 cents in October. I saw a low risk entry like yourself, and took it. Admittedly, I don't fully understand the technology, and I'm no gambler either.

On the fundamentals side, I don't think there is much risk until we get to the IND stage, at which point I may consider selling some.

How many others on this board own this stock?

Should I drop a coin in to your pious collection bowl on my way out?

Careful now, you don't want this forum to go 'HPC'

I think for those in this trade, it might be a good idea to discuss a long term exit strategy.

You only have to look at what happened to GNVC last week to see what can go wrong with these Biotech's, down 75% on the next days opening due to poor clinical trial results, and there would have been nothing you could have done about it.

BOOM! closed over a dollar!

 

I got in at 56-58 on the last dip.... nice

Boom! Increased my position by a third in the last 15 minutes @ $0.95! I'm done buying now.

Now lets see if Allan's lil baby pays up!!

Finally above 90 cents with a reasonable amount of conviction.

Can we keep above this level for the rest of the week?

Looks like we have some fresh big investors accumulating right now.

 

iHub message board

 

 

Anyone else on board?

Yes. Was long at $0.55 since October. Very, tempted (and tense) to add more now! Will see if price holds up into the close!

I really do think they will pop imminently .....

Been following this one for some weeks now. Looks like it has found support at around $0.60. If this breaks, who knows how low it can go. However, potential upside is huge, so long as they keep the good news flowing!

Did you pick up any on the pullback?

Reckon China has just endorsed that sentiment somewhat!

 

Good day for CanALaska too. This sector looks likely to get very warm.

Xemplar Energy (XE.V) is in the middle of a POP.

Mega Uranium (MGA.TO) looks like it's about to POP.

I like the charts for Tournigan (TVC.V) and Continental Precious Minerals (CZQ.TO), but I know nothing about these companies! Anyone here follow them?

The game's afoot!

 

Barratt / BDEV.L is now trading above the 252d.MA ... update

 

Let slip the "dogs of war" (hyping EA's)

haha

We fell back to 116p, slightly above the 252day MA. Me itching to buy. What indicators to watch that we dont fall below the 252d ma? exercising caution here ...