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SCYNEXIS’ first drug candidate, SCY-635, is currently being studied in patients chronically infected with hepatitis C virus. The World Health Organization estimates that about 3% of the world’s population is infected with HCV and that there are more than 170 million chronic carriers who are at risk of developing liver cirrhosis and/or liver cancer. SCYNEXIS is currently conducting clinical proof-of-concept studies in HCV patients. The Company hopes to move rapidly into Phase 2 studies.

Cyclophilin inhibition represents a new mechanism of action to treat HCV, and SCYNEXIS believes that SCY-635 may become an important new addition to the HCV treatment landscape. SCY-635 has demonstrated excellent oral bioavailability, is easy to synthesize and has shown additive or synergistic preclinical activity with interferon and ribavirin as well as with investigational agents (protease and polymerase inhibitors) being used in the treatment of HCV. Most importantly, it has been well tolerated in the clinical setting to date. The candidate successfully completed Phase 1 safety testing and has been studied in more than 140 subjects to date—both healthy volunteers and HCV infected patients.

Because SCY-635 affects a new target—cyclophilin, SCYNEXIS believes that the compound could be a useful addition to the current standard of care. The goal of augmenting the current standard of care is to increase the percentage of HCV patients that achieve a sustained virological response to the therapy. Likewise, because of the diverse nature of the cyclophilin target, SCYNEXIS anticipates that SCY-635 could be used clinically in combination with other investigational agents to develop a new standard of care for a wider spectrum of patients.

There are currently only two classes of drugs that are approved for the treatment of HCV: interferons and ribavirin. Pegylated interferons, when used in combination with ribavirin, have been shown to be effective in less than 50% of cases of HCV genotype 1—the most common genotype in North America. Interferons and ribavirin also carry black box labeling and have been associated with causing and/or aggravating fatal or life-threatening hemolytic anemia, neuropsychiatric, autoimmune and hematologic disorders. Given their toxicity, the treatment of the majority of HCV patients with currently approved therapeutics is contra indicated.