Scynexis announces presentation of data from fungerp candidate SCY-247

SCYNEXIS announced the presentation of preclinical efficacy data on its second generation fungerp candidate SCY-247. Ashraf Ibrahim, PhD, FAAM, FECCM, Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and an investigator at the Lundquist Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, presented a poster entitled, “SCY-247, a novel second-generation IV/oral triterpenoid antifungal, is efficacious in the neutropenic mouse model of pulmonary mucormycosis,” at the 11th Advances Against Aspergillosis and Mucormycosis Conference in Milan, Italy from January 25 – 27. Mucormycosis is a life-threatening fungal infection with an associated mortality that ranges from 46% to 96%4, most commonly affecting immunocompromised patients including those with leukemia, patients undergoing bone marrow transplants, and patients affected by severe COVID or uncontrolled diabetes mellitus. In this highly lethal mouse model of mucormycosis, SCY-247 showed very promising in vivo efficacy. Orally administered SCY-247 resulted in 40% and 50% survival at 21 days post infection for the intermediate and high doses, respectively, compared to 0% survival in the placebo group. This is comparable to the 40% survival observed in the control group treated with 10 mg/kg of intravenous standard of care of liposomal amphotericin B. Even more encouraging was a 90% survival observed in the group receiving combination therapy of SCY-247 32 mg/kg plus LAMB 10 mg/kg. The positive survival data correlated with a statistically significant fungal burden reduction in both lung and brain tissue with SCY-247 32 mg/kg dose and 48 mg/kg dose as well as with the active control LAMB. The combination treatment of SCY-247 plus LAMB demonstrated the greatest reduction in fungal burden and was highly statistically significant in both lung and brain tissue. The work reported here utilized the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ (NIAID’s) suite of preclinical services for in vivo testing.