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 supporting patients with serious diseases for which there are significant unmet needs. Our goal is to bring new therapeutic alternatives to patients with serious or potentially life threatening diseases whose needs are not being met by their current therapeutic options, or for whom there are no existing treatments. Our work is focused in areas including niche infectious diseases, gastroenterology and transplant medicine, and ultra orphan diseases.

With Cinryze™ (C1 Esterase Inhibitor [human)], a drug indicated for routine prophylaxis against angioedema attacks in adolescent and adult patients with hereditary angioedema (HAE), we are providing HAE patients with an important drug targeting the underlying cause of HAE attacks, a deficiency in a protein in the body called C1 inhibitor. The Cinryze PI can be found here.

In addition, with Vancocin® (Vancomycin Hydrochloride Capsules, USP), 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. Beyond Vancocin, our intent is to develop novel therapeutics to prevent recurrent C. difficile disease.

Further, 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. Among the most frequent and severe complement-mediated complications after kidney transplant are Antibody-mediated rejection (AMR) and Delayed Graft Function (DGF). Because they are both complement-mediated diseases, ViroPharma is assessing the utility of C1 esterase inhibitor to prevent or treat these dangerous conditions.

Thanks to the success of Cinryze therapy and Vancocin capsules, 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.