Benzinga | Oct 18, 2021 07:04AM EDT

Enochian BioSciences Announces Completion Of FDA Pre-IND For A Potential Cure For HIV

(NASDAQ:ENOB) ? Enochian BioSciences, Inc., a company focused on gene-modified cellular and immune therapies in infectious diseases and cancer, today announced the completion of an Investigator Pre-Investigational New Drug (IND) process following receipt of written comments from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) Office of Tissues and Advanced Therapies (OTAT).

Dr. Serhat Gumruk?u, co-founder and inventor of Enochian BioSciences, and Director of Seraph Research Institute (SRI), submitted an investigator-initiated Pre-IND. The request was based on the results of a 54-year old man living with HIV who had failed to suppress the virus with antiviral therapy (ART). The patient subsequently stopped taking ART and received an innovative treatment developed by SRI.

Enochian BioSciences holds the exclusive license for the product.

The patient's HIV infection blood levels were controlled more effectively for 365 consecutive days, off ART using this new innovative SRI treatment compared to what had previously been achieved with ART.

"We are grateful for the FDA's insightful and useful comments, which now provide us with a clear path to submit an IND in the near-term. We are encouraged to know that we are one step closer to making this treatment available to more people living with HIV," said Dr. Mark Dybul, CEO of Enochian BioSciences.

The proprietary therapy includes Natural Killer (NK) and Gamma Delta T-cells (GDT) collected from another person. During the entire period, no antiviral drugs were given. It is believed that the GDT cells, a small subset of immune cells that can be infected with HIV, could be a key factor in controlling the virus.

Dr. Peter Piot, the former head of UNAIDS and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in London, said, "Although the results so far are preliminary and in one person, the sooner the approach can be studied in others, the better. If proven to be effective, it could offer hope to many who would like to have alternatives to daily treatment, which can be costly and difficult to maintain."