Panacos Attracts $18.3M Round To Fund HIV Drug Development (BioWorld Today)
Panacos Pharmaceuticals Inc. raised $18.3 million in its Series C round of financing.
Panacos Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:PANC), a biotechnology company dedicated to developing the next generation of antiviral therapeutic products, today announced preliminary results from the 300 mg cohort of a Phase 2b study of bevirimat (PA-457) in patients failing HIV therapy due to drug resistance. In this cohort, eight patients received 300 mg of bevirimat solution once daily and two patients received placebo for 14 days on top of their failing background regimen.
Panacos Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: PANC), a biotechnology company dedicated to developing the next generation of antiviral therapeutic products, today announced the publication of an article authored by Panacos scientists and Dr. Michael Sakalian and colleagues at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in the June 2006 issue of the Journal of Virology. The article describes the results of a study elucidating the mechanism of action of PA-457, Panacos' lead drug candidate. PA-457 is the first in a new class of HIV drug candidates called Maturation Inhibitors that are designed to prevent the release of a key viral protein called Capsid from its precursor protein, Gag.
In the U.S., AIDS may not seem to be the urgent problem it once was. Powerful drugs introduced since 1996 have slashed the annual death rate in the U.S. from nearly 50,000 in 1995 to 16,000 in 2004. But the picture is still grim. New cases of infection continue unabated, at about 44,000 per year, with more Americans than ever—more than 1 million—infected with HIV. Around the world the epidemic is growing, with more than 40 million people carrying the virus. What's more, HIV increasingly outwits today's drugs even as side effects take a toll.
V.I. Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: VITX) (“Vitex” or “the Company”), a biotechnology company dedicated to developing the next generation of anti-infective
therapeutics, today announced that it has closed its previously announced merger with Panacos Pharmaceuticals. Under the terms of the merger, Vitex will issue approximately 227.5 million shares to Panacos stockholders to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Panacos.
Bringing together two infectious disease pipelines, Panacos Pharmaceuticals Inc. entered a definitive merger agreement with V.I. Technologies Inc., also called Vitex.
