Biovista Announces Positive Efficacy Results in a Pre-Clinical Trial of its BVA-101 Repositioned Drug for Multiple Sclerosis

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia, April 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Biovista Inc. today announced that BVA-101, its drug targeting Multiple Sclerosis (MS), has shown significant positive results in the MOG-induced Experimental Allergic Encephalomyelitis (EAE) murine model of MS. BVA-101, an existing drug that Biovista repositioned in MS and is aimed at neuroprotection, was shown to have both efficacy in reducing symptoms and no toxic effects in this well established model of MS.

"We are excited about these early results that confirm the predictive capability of our repositioning platform technology and encourage us to further develop this compound in a disease area where there is a significant need for new therapies" said Aris Persidis, Ph.D., President of Biovista. "What is also encouraging is that we reached this stage just 4 months after deciding to work in MS. At the present time we are exploring all options available to us, including the further co-development with a pharmaceutical company and the licensing of the IP to a generics company" Dr. Persidis added.

About Biovista's BVA-101 trial in the MS EAE-MOG model

MS is a chronic inflammatory disease of the CNS with unknown etiology. It is the most frequent non-traumatic disabling neurologic disease among young adults, with 12,000 new diagnoses per year in the US alone, and over 2.5 million patients worldwide. In the animal proof of concept trial, BVA-101 was compared to dexamethasone, a potent anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive drug that is efficient in accelerating the recovery from MS relapses but too toxic for chronic use. BVA-101 induced a statistically significant reduction of EAE severity, the magnitude of which was statistically similar to that caused by dexamethasone.

About Biovista's repositioning pipeline and technology platform

Biovista applies high-throughput discovery efforts to finding solutions for commercially relevant unmet medical needs. Biovista's proprietary repositioning technology allows the company's experts to perform mechanism-of-action based analyses and systematically assess clinical outcomes in any therapeutic area of interest, at relatively low cost and very short time spans. The company is presently using this platform to develop its own pipeline of repositioned drugs in areas such as CNS, cardiovascular disease, oncology and auto-immune diseases and is expecting to make further announcements in Q3 '09.

CONTACT: For more information, please contact: Dr. Aris Persidis,
Biovista, Inc., +1-434-242-6514, arisp@biovista.com; For a non-confidential
information pack on BVA-101 contact Biovista at info@biovista.com.

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