Biovista and the CFIDS Association of America Achieve Drug Repositioning Milestone with Pre-IND Meeting

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia and CHARLOTTE, North Carolina, May 29, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --

Biovista and the CFIDS Association of America announced today the successful completion of the first phase of their collaboration. Funded as part of the CFIDS' Research Institute Without Walls, Biovista identified candidate treatments for CFS using its state-of-the-art COSS approach. Two candidate treatments, including a combination therapy, were identified and are being prepared for proof-of-concept clinical trials, with an FDA pre-IND meeting scheduled in Q3 2013.

"We are very excited to have reached this stage within a year of starting our collaboration. We look forward to furthering our understanding of this complex disease and developing a treatment that will improve CFS patients' quality of life," said Dr. Andreas Persidis, Biovista's CEO. "Our work is an example of things to come in terms of novel collaboration models that promise to accelerate treatment development and, through the drug repositioning approach, do so cost effectively," Dr Persidis added.

"There is a big gap in the pipeline that moves basic laboratory research into safe and effective treatments. Without a bridge to bring discoveries to the clinic, laboratory research rarely becomes more than a paper. We are providing the means for basic researchers to move discoveries through the translational research pipeline with our Research Institute Without Walls," said Kim McCleary, president and CEO of CFIDS.

"Therapies for ME/CFS are an unmet medical need. This is largely due to the lack of translating the scientific knowledge into meaningful impact for patients," added Dr. Suzanne D. Vernon, Scientific Director of CFIDS. "We understand the ME/CFS knowledgebase and know how to fill this gap. Biovista recognized the opportunity for discovery. This drug repositioning project is an excellent example of effective use of existing information to make a new treatment discovery."

About Biovista

Biovista finds novel uses for existing drugs and profiles their side effects using mechanism of action analysis. Biovista develops its own pipeline in CNS, oncology, auto-immune and rare diseases and collaborates with biopharmaceutical companies and Patient Groups on indication expansion, portfolio de-risking, and adverse event prediction. (http://www.biovista.com).

About CFIDS

The CFIDS Association of America is at the leading edge of ME/CFS research. For more information, please visit The Association's web site at http://www.cfids.org or their research blog at http://www.Research1st.org

Contacts
Biovista
Dr. Andreas Persidis
[email protected]
T: +1-434-242-6514
 
The CFIDS Association of America
Dr. Suzanne D. Vernon
[email protected]

SOURCE Biovista