Zentek Reports Successful Testing of Aptamer Against Omicron Covid-19 Variant

GUELPH, ON / ACCESSWIRE / November 29, 2023 / Zentek Ltd. ("Zentek" or the "Company") (NASDAQ:ZTEK)(TSX-V:ZEN), an intellectual property technology development and commercialization company announces successful testing of its COVID-19 High-Binding Affinity (C19HBA) aptamer against the Omicron XBB 1.5 variant (Omicron) by the Miller Lab at McMaster University in the latest pre-clinical study.

The performance of the C19HBA aptamer was comparable to the performance of monoclonal antibody, according to the Miller Lab, as it once again provided clinical protection against infection with the Omicron XBB 1.5 variant. This is a significant result given that aptamers have the potential to replace or compete with monoclonal antibodies in many therapies due to their advantages including cost of production, stability, and speed of development.

"Our aptamer has now demonstrated that it works very well against both the original Wuhan Covid-19 strain and the latest Omicron XBB 1.5 variant while current monoclonal antibody treatments have been shown to lose their protection for the newer variants as a human therapeutic." said Greg Fenton, CEO of Zentek. "Our aptamer technology can be a powerful resource to provide pandemic readiness against future strains of Covid-19. Following these excellent results, McMaster and Zentek are now leveraging our platform to develop new aptamers for the treatment of influenza and norovirus."

The Company will now begin to explore partnership opportunities in the pharmaceutical space as its aptamer platform may offer a fast, economical, and novel approach to the development of new therapeutics for clinically relevant biological markers. Moreover, the platform technology can simply be added to existing aptamers already in development and bring significant value by substantially increasing the effectiveness of the aptamer or drug while reducing or eliminating the problem of renal filtration. Currently to evade renal filtration, aptamer therapeutics add polyethylene glycol (PEG), but there is a small percentage of the population that is allergic to PEG. Aptamer therapeutics with PEG have failed in clinical trials previously because of this allergic response. HBA aptamers may solve the renal clearance challenge without the need for PEG and this potential risk to some patients.