HUDDINGE, Sweden--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Medivir (STO:MVIRB) (Huddinge, Sweden) and one of China’s largest pharmaceutical companies, Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine Company (Shanghai), instigated a research collaboration in December 2003 to develop protease inhibitors against chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Pivotal advances have been made and important milestones achieved in the project. Medivir and Hengrui have therefore elected to extend their research collaboration further to June 18th, 2007 for the development of drugs against COPD. The project is based on Medivir’s COPD protease inhibitor program, screening systems and enabling technologies, combined with Hengrui’s acknowledged expertise in medicinal chemistry. Preclinical studies in specific test models have shown highly promising efficacy based on biomarkers. Further studies will now be undertaken within the collaboration and the next stage of the project is the selecting of one or more candidate drugs (CDs).
