HEPATITIS C BACKGROUND

Worldwide Prevalence:

More than 170 million people worldwide are infected

HCV infection can persist for decade and eventually lead to cirrhosis, liver failure and liver cancer.

Current therapy:

Only 2 molecules anti HCV are commercialized: Interferon and Ribavirin with a failure of treatment in 40% of the cases.

New safe and effective treatment options for HCV infection are needed

The Market:

The worldwide market for hepatitis C therapeutics is expected to reach nearly $4 billion by 2007

Development of innovative Hepatitis C (HCV) protease inhibitors program


Our first family of HCV NS3 NS4 a targeted protease inhibitors was designed accroding to our "structure based drug desing". Our objective is to engineer a lead compound with an IC50 of less than 100m in the cellular replicon assay and move this compound forward through preclinical development with a goal to file an IND as early as Q2008.

Genoscience knowledges on HCV and HIV Protease Inhibitors should prove to be useful in the optimization of future HCV protease inhibitor-based therapies. We are the first company to take into account the drug resistance phenomenon in the HCV field. We wish to orient the modification of our compounds to avoid these mutations involved in the HCV protease drug resistance.

The Genoscience's compounds are HCV NS3-4A PI and could be a new therapeutic option for HCV patients. We developed a complete testing platform of specific drug screening HCV assay included a NS3-NS4A enzymatic screening assay, a FRET assay and a cellular replicon system. Based on this knowledge, we wish to orient the rational design of our compounds to avoid the known Protease Inhibitors drug resistance.