Bristol-Myers Announces Results From Three-part Phase 2a Study Of BMS-955176

(RTTNews) - Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (BMY) announced overall antiviral activity and safety results from the three-part Phase 2a proof-of-concept study of BMS-955176, a novel investigational therapy designed to prevent the maturation of HIV-1.

Presented today at the European AIDS Clinical Society's 15th European AIDS Conference (EACS) in Barcelona, the study findings support the continued development of BMS-955176, an investigational therapy from a potential new drug class that is designed to attack the HIV-1 virus differently than other available treatments.

BMS-955176 is a second-generation maturation inhibitor designed to inhibit one of the last steps of the HIV-1 viral lifecycle, which is theorized to disrupt the "maturation" of new virus particles and cause the release of immature HIV-1 particles that are unable to complete their lifecycle. The overall results of the study demonstrate BMS-955176's antiretroviral activity against the HIV-1 virus as both monotherapy and in combination with other antiretroviral medicines, and across patient subtypes (B, C), including those infected with the HIV-1 virus with changes in a critical protein that were not responsive to a previously investigated maturation inhibitor.

Today at EACS, Bristol-Myers Squibb presented new data from Part C of the randomized, multi-part trial evaluating the antiviral activity and safety of BMS-955176 administered as monotherapy in patients infected with HIV-1 subtype C, a type of the virus that has a higher prevalence of the naturally occurring changes in the Gag polyprotein (a critical protein for viral replication). Taken together, data from all three parts of the Phase 2a study support the further evaluation of BMS-955176 in broader global studies.