AVI BioPharma reports Esprit technology effective against diabetes in mice

New York, June 5 - AVI BioPharma, Inc. announced preclinical data indicating that its antisense-based exon skipping pre-RNA interference technology (Esprit) was effective in delaying the onset of diabetes and reversing the disease after onset in a mouse model.

On one test, mice were treated shortly after birth for 10 days with antisense to induce exon skipping. This short treatment delayed onset of diabetes by about 28 days compared to controls, AVI said.

In a second set of therapeutic experiments, adult mice with early signs of diabetes exhibiting elevated blood glucose levels were treated for 10 days with antisense exon skipping therapy. More than 50% of these animals were protected from full diabetes onset for the duration of the experiment (over 200 days).

Both of the observations were statistically significant, AVI noted.

The findings were presented at the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies annual meeting in San Francisco.

AVI BioPharma, based in Portland, Ore., develops therapeutic products for the treatment of life-threatening diseases using third-generation Neugene antisense drugs.

© 2015 Prospect News.
All content on this website is protected by copyright law in the U.S. and elsewhere. For the use of the person downloading only.
Redistribution and copying are prohibited by law without written permission in advance from Prospect News.
Redistribution or copying includes e-mailing, printing multiple copies or any other form of reproduction.