PASADENA, CA, USA I February 15, 2018 I Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: ARWR) today announced that it has received approval from the New Zealand Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Authority (MEDSAFE) and from the local Ethics Committee to proceed with a first-in-human study of ARO-HBV, which is being developed as a potentially curative therapy for patients with chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. The company anticipates that dosing will begin around the end of March.

The study, AROHBV1001 (NCT03365947), is a Phase 1/2 study to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and pharmacokinetic effects of single-ascending doses (SAD) of ARO-HBV in healthy adult volunteers, and to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and pharmacodynamic effects of multiple-ascending doses (MAD) of ARO-HBV in patients with chronic HBV.

The SAD portion is designed to include up to 5 cohorts of 6 subjects per cohort. Each SAD subject will receive a single-dose administration of either placebo or ARO-HBV at up to 5 dose levels (35, 100, 200, 300, 400 mg). The MAD portion is designed to include up to 8 cohorts of 4 HBV patients per cohort. Each MAD patient will receive 3 doses of ARO-HBV at up to 4 dose levels (100, 200, 300, 400 mg).

About Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals

Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals develops medicines that treat intractable diseases by silencing the genes that cause them. Using a broad portfolio of RNA chemistries and efficient modes of delivery, Arrowhead therapies trigger the RNA interference mechanism to induce rapid, deep, and durable knockdown of target genes. RNA interference, or RNAi, is a mechanism present in living cells that inhibits the expression of a specific gene, thereby affecting the production of a specific protein. Arrowhead’s RNAi-based therapeutics leverage this natural pathway of gene silencing.

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SOURCE: Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals