BetterLife Pharma (CSE:BETR) initiates preclinical study against Delta variant

• BetterLife Pharma (BETR) has initiated a preclinical study of AP-003 (rhIFNa2b) against the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2
• The studies are being conducted at Dr. Stephen Barr’s laboratory at the ImPaKT Facility at Western University (UWO)
• Previous studies at UWO have shown effectiveness against the Wuhan reference strain, Alpha and Beta variants
• The company expects to release results in the next two weeks
• BetterLife Pharma is a biotechnology company focused on developing compounds to treat neurological disorders
• BetterLife Pharma (BETR) is up by 9.26 per cent and is currently trading at $0.295 per share

BetterLife Pharma (BETR) has initiated a preclinical study of AP-003 (rhIFNa2b) against the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2.

The studies are being conducted at Dr. Stephen Barr’s laboratory at the ImPaKT Facility at Western University (UWO).

These in-vitro anti-viral studies are a follow-up to earlier in-vitro studies conducted at UWO, which have shown potent and similar anti-viral activity of AP-003 against:

• The COVID-19 Wuhan reference strain (EC₅₀=0.51)
• The Alpha variant (B.1.1.7, UK, EC₅₀=1.26)
• The Beta variant (B.1.351, South Africa, EC₅₀=0.25)

AP-003’s first proposed target indication is for people at higher risk of developing severe COVID-19.

The company expects to release results in the next two weeks.

Ahmad Doroudian, CEO of BetterLife, commented,

“COVID-19 is very much still a threat to the global population and its variants are the key challenge when developing therapeutics to protect against it. The broad mechanism of action of interferon is such that our scientists hypothesized it could be equally effective against different variants. We are very pleased to see that early preclinical data confirms this as this takes us one step closer to the potential result of reducing overall hospitalization rate, long-term tissue damage and death by reducing the overall severity of the disease.

The global vaccine roll-out is making headway; however, there are still several reasons why there is a need for an effective, easy-to-administer, non-invasive treatment, such as AP-003. This includes the time it will take to vaccinate the global population; not knowing the duration of protection afforded by the current vaccines; the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants; and the emergence of possible totally new coronavirus pandemics in the future. AP-003, being a type I interferon, is a broad-acting anti-viral agent, and therefore potentially could be effective in all these scenarios.”

BetterLife Pharma is a biotechnology company focused on developing compounds to treat neurological disorders.

BetterLife Pharma (BETR) is up by 9.26 per cent and is currently trading at $0.295 per share as of 9:30 am ET.