Open Orphan wins £5m contract for human study in RSV

Open Orphan announced on Friday that its hVIVO subsidiary has signed a £5m respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) human challenge study contract with an unnamed European biotechnology company, to test its intravenous antiviral candidate.

The AIM-traded firm said the study was expected to start this year, and would test and assess the efficacy of the client's antiviral candidate in a cohort of healthy young adult volunteers.

It said the contract built on its existing relationship with the biotech, following previous early clinical work completed by the Venn Breda team.

The company said it expected revenues from the contract to be recognised across 2022 and 2023.

Open Orphan said the study would be conducted by hVIVO at its quarantine facilities in London, which were recently expanded to 62 beds from 43.

The company's specialised virology laboratories, ‘hLAB’, will provide quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR), infectivity and serology data for the study.

Healthy volunteers would be recruited through the company's volunteer recruitment arm, ‘FluCamp’.

Open Orphan said the FluCamp volunteer recruitment capacity was also recently expanded across its screening facilities in London and Manchester, to enable larger cohorts to be recruited more quickly than before.

The new screening facilities opened in Manchester expanded its reach, amid increasing demand for human challenge studies, allowing the firm to recruit volunteers beyond the greater London area.

“I am pleased to announce this £5m contract to test our client's antiviral candidate using the hVIVO RSV human challenge study model,” said Open Orphan chief executive officer Mo Khan.

“RSV is a significant threat to public health, and we are delighted to support this European biotech in the development of its antiviral candidate.

“Following the recent expansion of our FluCamp facilities, which boosts our volunteer and patient recruitment capabilities as well as increasing our bed capacity by 45%, we are now even better equipped to identify volunteers and to complete our growing pipeline of studies in a time efficient manner.”

At 1024 GMT, shares in Open Orphan were up 4.52% at 14.11p.