Arrevus Inc. (www.arrevus.com), an early stage biotechnology company focused on developing chaperone protein inhibitors for infectious diseases, today announced receipt of a $1.5 million Fast-Track grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to expedite research on the effects of ARV-1502 on bacteremia caused by "high priority" multi-drug resistant (MDR) pathogens.

"Arrevus is eager to investigate how ARV-1502 may help patients suffering from MDR bacteremia.  Spread of resistant bacteria beyond the primary site of infection results in a high mortality rate and can occur in many clinical scenarios; this is an important indication that we need to address," said Carl N. Kraus, M.D., President and CEO of Arrevus.

ARV-1502, Arrevus' lead candidate, is an interesting product. It was born out of  Arrevus' insight into the rapid response exhibit to bacterial infection. Study of the peptides released by many insects in response to infection revealed the most active against Gram-negative bacteria being “proline-rich” antimicrobial peptides (PrAMPs).

When Arrevus designed ARV-1502, they first aligned the sequences of all known native PrAMPs in insects.  The most frequent residues were identified in their specific relative positions.  These residues resulted in distinct “partial” sequences that were then integrated into a single peptide, which became, ARV-1502.

"Research by Arrevus is extremely important given the extraordinary mortality associated with bacteremia. The investigation of Arrevus's modified host defense peptides is exciting, especially given the antibiotic-enhancing properties of ARV-1502 on BSIs identified in prior animal studies," said Dr. Yan Xiong, consortium Principal Investigator and Senior Investigator at Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and Researcher at UCLA School of Medicine.