Therapeutic Focus
Innovative Therapeutic Options for Life Threatening Diseases
Since our founding in 1994, ViroPharma has focused its attention on bringing new product opportunities forward for some of society’s great unmet medical needs. We hope that our efforts will result in improved treatment alternatives for patients suffering from diseases with few, if any, treatment alternatives.
Today, our current focus is to develop these important, new products for physician specialists working with serious infectious diseases in areas including: hospital/transplant medicine, and gastroenterology.
Physicians focused in transplant medicine must contend with the repercussions of the suppressed immune systems of patients undergoing stem cell (bone marrow) or solid organ transplant, including organ failure and rejection, a variety of opportunistic infections, and other transplant complications. In the U.S. alone, there are approximately 9,000 stem cell transplants, and over 23,000 solid organ transplants on an annual basis. One of the most significant pathogens contributing to morbidity and mortality in patients undergoing stem cell or solid organ transplant is cytomegalovirus. Our clinical focus is in the prevention of cytomegalovirus disease in transplant patients with a developmental compound called maribavir, a specific antiviral medicine that targets cytomegalovirus, a virus that may cause a deadly disease in patients undergoing stem cell and organ transplant
Gastroenterology is the branch of medicine dealing with the study of the function and disorders of the digestive system: the esophagus, stomach, intestines, and associated organs including the pancreas, gallbladder, and liver. Numerous significant diseases affect the digestive system.
In addition, with Vancocin®, a potent oral antibiotic used to treat two significant bacterial infections of the lower digestive tract, antibiotic-associated pseudomembranous colitis caused by Clostridium difficile and enterocolitis caused by Staphylococcus aureus , we provide an important antibiotic to our targeted physician specialists, internists and gastroenterologists in hospital settings. The Vancocin PI can be viewed here.
Thanks to the success of Vancocin, we are today in the enviable position of investigating new products that aim to save and improve the lives of patients suffering from deadly diseases.