Myriad Pharmaceuticals announced last week that it will suspend further development of its anti-HIV drug, MPC-4326, and will instead focus on developing anti-cancer drugs. The company attributed the change to strategic and business reasons.

Patrick Burke, Vice President of Corporate and Business Development at Myriad Pharmaceuticals, stated in an interview with The AIDS Beacon that Myriad is currently looking for a partner to advance MPC-4326 and an additional novel HIV drug. This partner would then acquire rights to advance the drugs further.

Myriad’s Phase 2 clinical trial into the efficacy and safety of MPC-4326 was terminated June 10.

MPC-4326 is an investigational drug that is a viral maturation inhibitor. The first in a new class of drugs, MPC-4326 prevents the HIV virus from maturing correctly by blocking a necessary enzyme, leaving the virus harmless.

Preclinical studies indicated that the drug is effective against strains of the HIV virus that are resistant to approved antiretroviral drugs.

In early clinical trials MPC-4326 did not pose any safety risks and successfully decreased the amount of HIV virus in the blood of HIV-positive participants.

The company stated in its press release that the focus on anti-cancer drugs is an effort to “conserve its financial resources to extend [Myriad's] projected cash runway beyond 2013,” indicating that the move away from anti-HIV drugs is for financial reasons rather than problems with safety or efficacy.

As of June 14, information on MPC-4326 had been removed from Myriad’s website, although cached versions were still available.

Studies indicated a slow rate of development of viral resistance to MPC-4326, which suggests it could be especially useful in HIV treatment. As viral resistance to approved drugs becomes more common, Myriad hoped MPC-4326 would prove effective in combination with other antiretrovirals.

Trials also showed that MPC-4326 had fewer of the drug-drug interactions that are common amongst some of the currently available HIV therapies.

For more information, please see the press release on the Myriad Pharmaceuticals website. For information on the terminated clinical trial, please see the United States clinical trials registry.