VANCOUVER, British Columbia - BetterLife Pharma Inc. ('BetterLife' or the 'Company') (CSE: BETR / OTCQB: BETRF / FRA: NPAU ), an emerging biotech company focused on the development and commercialization of inhaled antiviral therapy against COVID-19 and emerging viral infections, is pleased to announce early positive in vitro results from Dr. Stephen Barr's Laboratory at the state-of-the-art ImPaKT Facility at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, Western University, Ontario.

Early data of BetterLife's recombinant human interferon alpha-2b (rhIFN?2b) show potent anti-viral activity against the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant (up to 97% protection in human cells infected with the virus).

The Delta SARS-CoV-2 variant (B.1.617.2, India outbreak) causes more infections and spreads faster than earlier forms of the virus and leads to more severe illness in unvaccinated people (US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], Sept 2021). Previously, BetterLife's rhIFN?2b showed potent activity against the Wuhan reference strain, Alpha (B.1.1.7, UK), and the Beta (B.1.351, South Africa) variants. Further studies are ongoing to validate these preliminary results and to test rhIFN?2b activity against Gamma (Brazil), Lambda (Peru), and the recent C.1.2 (South Africa) variant which contains mutations associated with increased transmissibility and the ability to evade antibodies therapy.

'The Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 is now the most common COVID-19 variant in the U.S., nearly two times as contagious as earlier variants, a great risk to unvaccinated people, and presents a challenge in developing therapeutics against the virus,' said Ahmad Doroudian, CEO of BetterLife. 'We are very pleased to see the early preclinical data confirming the high anti-viral activity of BetterLife's rhIFN?2b against this variant of concern.'

An exploratory study in Wuhan, China, in COVID-19 patients, showed that patients treated with inhaled rhIFN?2b had a more rapid rate of viral clearance than patients in the comparator arm who did not receive inhaled rhIFN?2b. As announced in BetterLife's press release on September 22, 2021, BetterLife and the Escuela de Medicina at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile have initiated a Phase 1-2 randomized placebo controlled trial ('IN2COVID'; ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04988217 ) in COVID-19 patients in Chile. The trial tests BetterLife's proprietary inhaled rhIFN?2b product, AP-003, versus placebo in early stage COVID-19 patients (

(C) 2021 Electronic News Publishing, source ENP Newswire