A Western Australian pharmaceutical innovation treating respiratory viruses has moved toward clinical trials after being awarded a $500,000 state government grant.
Virex Pharma is developing a nano-emulsion nasal spray named GlyXine to treat viral respiratory and encephalitic infections.
The company hopes GlyXine will enable an antiviral already used for hepatitis B & C to be inhaled to treat the likes of COVID-19, herpes, influenza A and dengue fever.
For now the focus is respiratory syncytial virus, a common cold-like infection which kills about 120,000 and hospitalises some 3.2 million children aged under 5 a year, mostly in developing nations.
Virex Pharma chief executive Rolee Kumar said the grant was the lynchpin to moving trials forward.
“It has been about one year of us slogging and trying to apply for this grant and that grant, and Stu and I have probably been a bit disheartened,” she said.
“Our program was pretty much ready… to start testing animal models back in May.
“(Influenza, COVID and RSV) actually go hand-in-hand – one follows the other – so the fact we have an antiviral which could possibly be working against all three of them is actually amazing.”
Ms Kumar said government grants were proving a boon for an industry which had struggled for local financial support in the past.
GlyXine is the brainchild of Virex lead scientist Dr Stuart Gunzburg who had the idea while homebound during COVID-19 restrictions in 2020.
The pandemic had a silver lining too in fast-tracking biomedical innovations through regulatory approvals.
Dr Gunzburg said Virex was working with Telethon Kids Institute on a few more animal studies before moving forward to human trials within one year.
"During COVID I was sitting at home fairly bored looking at potential therapies for treatment because at that stage, there was no therapeutic treatment for COVID-19," he said.
"I looked at what had been utilized against SARS and there were some active agents that had shown good potential.
“We were trying to target something that could be delivered in the home environment, something that can be stored in your medicine cabinet."
Dr Gunzburg said the GlyXine formula did not need refrigeration and had a long shelf life, enabling it to be used as a household treatment and in remote and underprivileged areas.
The $500,000 grant came courtesy of the state government’s $4.3 million innovation seed fund awarded to nine applicants.
Medical Research Minister Stephen Dawson said the fund backed start-ups which had the potential to save lives.
Other recipients include the EarFlo device, VitalTrace’s foetal monitoring biosensor, and treatments for alzheimers and liver cancer.
