NanoViricides Reports that It Has Begun Drug Development to Combat Recent Cases of Severe Pediatric Hepatitis

SHELTON, CT / ACCESSWIRE / May 16, 2022 / NanoViricides, Inc. (NYSE American:NNVC) (the "Company") a global leader in the development of highly effective antiviral therapies based on a novel nanomedicines platform reports that it has begun drug development to combat recent cases of severe pediatric hepatitis. Specifically, the Company has initiated a program to screen its library of broad-spectrum antiviral nanoviricides against human Adenovirus 41 Type F (hAd41-F), believed to be strongly associated with the occurrence of severe hepatitis syndrome in some children, causing liver transplants as well as fatalities in large percentages of cases.

The Company's top priority remains initiating human clinical trials of its SARS-CoV-2 drug candidate NV-CoV-2 to combat COVID-19. The Company expects filing of a clinical trial application for COVID-19 to take place fairly soon, although the timelines are outside the Company's control.

The Company has previously successfully developed a drug candidate that was shown to be highly effective in animal studies against adenoviral Epidemic Kerato-Conjunctivitis (EKC), a candidate that is presently in the Company's pipeline for further clinical development.

The Company believes it can successfully develop a drug candidate against hAd41-F in a relatively short period of time, if one or more of its existing pipeline candidates or other nanoviricide candidates in its drug candidate library are found to be effective. To this end, the Company is developing an antiviral assay for testing these drug candidates against hAd41-F infection in cell cultures in its own BSL2 Virology facility.

Adenovirus-41, Type F (hAd41-F) is widely believed to be the cause of the growing number of hepatitis cases in children worldwide that have required liver transplants and have reported fatalities. It is thought that a combination of prior SARS-CoV-2 exposure or infection, along with a current hAd41-F infection, may be responsible for this devastating syndrome, although no definitive cause of this severe hepatitis syndrome has been established. The number of cases worldwide has risen to 450 as of May 15, 2022 as reported by NBC News online. In the USA, the CDC has reported more than 110 cases, with more than 90% requiring hospitalization, of which 14% required liver transplants, and at least 1 fatality, with an additional 5 fatalities under investigation of whether they were caused by the same syndrome (https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/symptoms-possible-causes-my ... . See also,