Pasadena Pharmaceutical Research Company Moves Closer to Possible Cure for Hepatitis B

A Pasadena-based pharmaceutical company announced Wednesday that it has dosed its first patient with what they believe could be the cure for the hepatitis B virus.

Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals, a company known for developing medicines that treat intractable diseases by silencing the genes that cause them, dosed the first of their 24 healthy volunteers with a multiple ascending dose of ARC-521, a medicine which they hope will silence the genetic functions associated with production of HBV, according to a statement released to the media.

According to the press release, the use a multiple ascending dose is designed to evaluate the safety, tolerability and antiviral activity of single and multiple doses of ARC-521 in patients who have chronic hepatitis B.

“The innovative design for the first-in-man study of ARC-521 is intended to get to multiple dose data in patients rapidly. Arrowhead’s development staff and the experienced investigators working on the study are operating at best-in-class speeds, enabling us to begin the MAD portion of the study just three months into the clinical program,” said Bruce Given, chief operating officer and head of R&D at Arrowhead in the statement. “This study may have multiple readouts, including single dose safety data in healthy volunteers and single and multiple dose safety and antiviral activity data in HBV patients. These readouts should happen progressively, potentially starting during the first quarter of 2017.”

ARC-521 is a second-generation candidate designed to complement its predecessor, ARC-520, in reducing the levels of hepatitis B proteins and the RNA template used to produce the virus’s DNA, according to the media statement. Arrowhead is investigating ARC-521 specifically to determine if it can significantly reduce circulating and non-circulating proteins and RNA, which would allow the host’s immune system to respond, effectively functioning as a cure.

About 350-400 million people globally suffer from chronic HBV, which can lead to cirrhosis of the liver, something that is responsible for over 80 percent of primary liver cancer worldwide according to the media release.