Biotech, Flu, Drugs

AVI Developing Swine Flu Drugs

Luke Timmerman 6/22/09

AVI Biopharma, a Portland, OR-based developer of RNA-based drugs, said today it has secured a contract with the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency to develop drugs for H1N1, or swine flu. Under the contract, worth as much as $5.1 million, AVI will analyze the H1N1 sequence, determine appropriate targets and identify lead and back-up candidate drugs. The company (NASDAQ: AVII) also plans to do animal tests.

Luke Timmerman is the National Biotechnology Editor for Xconomy. You can e-mail him at ltimmerman@xconomy.com, call 206-624-2374, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ldtimmerman.