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VIRxSYS presented data at the following four conferences in the first half of 2008:

Annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (Boston, MA, USA) February 2008

Results demonstrating the slowing and possible halting of HIV replication in humans were presented from the Phase II trial of VRX496, a gene therapy treatment for patients with AIDS. VRX496 is a lentiviral vector that is derived from HIV-1 itself but has the disease-causing elements removed. VIRxSYS used this vector to deliver RNA antisense targeting the HIV envelope and observed that VRX496 appeared to cause wild type (wt)-HIV particles to lose their envelopes. Additionally, the in vivo pressure delivered by a patient's own modified cells led to massive quasispecies reductions and the production of impaired and less replicative virions. Treatment with VRX496 appeared to have a measurable effect on the replicative fitness of HIV for up to three years following just one injection.

Keystone Symposia on Molecular Mechanisms of HIV Pathogenesis and HIV Vaccine (Banff, Alberta, Canada) March 2008

VIRxSYS presented initial mouse and primate data from the study of VRX1023, a new vaccine approach that uses a lentiviral vector expressing HIV antigens. In the study, VRX1023 delivered antigens that induced long-lasting cellular and humoral immune responses, better than those seen with other viral vectors, a powerful approach used to elicit anti-HIV immune responses. The goal of VRX1023 is to induce a powerful immune response, thereby reducing the impact of the first stages of infection by preventing the massive destruction of CD4 T cells that ensues. Activation of both cellular and humoral immunity can also halt the slow destruction of the immune system by the latently dormant virus. The results from
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