Meletios Therapeutics licences antiviral patent

Meletios has signed an exclusive license agreement with Institut Pasteur to commercialise Defective Viral Genomes (DVG). DVGs are truncated or rearranged but harmless copies of a virus that inhibit the replication of the original pathogenic virus.

Under the agreement, Meletios has the right to generate patent-protected DVG sequences to treat infections with the Zika and the Chikungunya virus for which there is no antiviral treatment available to date. Furthermore, Meletios gained the exclusive right to use Marco Vignuzzi’s patented technology platform to generate DVG sequences for any other RNA virus.

Zika virus infections can cause significant neurological damage to fetuses of infected pregnant women; and Chikungunya, can be very painful and cause disabling long-term rheumatological and joint sequels. 

The company’s first drug candidate, MLT103, has confirmed its potential in in vitro and in vivo models by acting on both the SARS-CoV-2 and infected host cells and is set to be tested on humans as soon as possible.