PORTLAND, OR--(Marketwire - November 10, 2008) - AVI BioPharma, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVII), a developer of RNA-based drugs, today announced that its partner Global Therapeutics, a Cook Medical company, has initiated the world's first clinical trial of a drug eluting stent that uses a PPMO (peptide-conjugated morpholino phosphorodiamidate oligomer)-based RNA therapeutic agent aimed at silencing C-MYC, one of the genes responsible for causing arteries to reclose after stenting (restenosis).
