Investorideas.com Newswire
Date: July 16, 2020
Source:: Streetwise Reports

Shares of Taiwan Liposome Co. reached a new 52-week high after the company released a manuscript describing how its inhalable liposomal hydroxychloroquine may provide clinical benefit and offer a potential treatment for Covid-19.

Clinical-stage specialty pharmaceutical company Taiwan Liposome Co. Ltd. (TLC:NASDAQ), which is focused on the development of nanomedicines to meet unmet medical needs, today announced that "a pre-print version of a manuscript on TLC's strategy to treat Covid-19 disease with targeted delivery of inhalable liposomal hydroxychloroquine has been made publicly available."

The company explained that "hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) is an anti-malarial and anti-inflammatory drug that has been shown to inhibit SARS-CoV-2 infection in vitro and tested in clinical studies." The firm stated that recent clinical studies of orally ingested HCQ have demonstrated inconclusive results though due to the extremely high dosage levels required to achieve effective antiviral levels.

The firm indicated that "the manuscript describes a nonclinical pharmacokinetics study in which, comparing equivalent doses of inhalable liposomal HCQ to intravenous (to represent oral) unformulated HCQ, inhalable liposomal HCQ achieved increased exposure (~30-fold) and half-life (~2.5-fold) in the lungs while also achieving lower blood and heart exposure." The company further advised that an inhalable liposomal formulation of HCQ would require only a tiny fraction of the oral dose in order to achieve sufficient and locally sustained drug exposure in the lungs, thereby reducing systemic and cardiac toxicities frequently observed with higher HCQ oral doses.    [FULL  STORY]