NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 19, 2006--FermaVir Pharmaceuticals, Inc., (OTCBB:FMVR - News), announced today that new preclinical studies show that when its prodrug FV-100 is dosed orally, exceptional concentrations of active compound can be measured in the blood. These experiments showed that at the highest level of dosing required by the Food and Drug Administration in preclinical studies, levels of the active compound exceeded 50,000 (fifty-five thousand) times the EC50 for antiviral activity against varicella zoster, the causative virus for Shingles. The EC50 is a measure of the amount of a compound which inhibits 50% of the virus in vitro. Significantly, concentrations of the active compound remained well over 100 times the EC50 for over seventy-two hours after dosing. FV-100 is a novel antiviral drug candidate to address the potentially serious and debilitating viral condition known as shingles.
