Empowered Patient Podcast Developing Broad Spectrum Antiviral Drugs and Rising Threat from Avian Flu with Dr. Sam Lee Cocrystal Pharma
Dr. Sam Lee, Co-CEO of Cocrystal Pharma, is an expert in developing small-molecule antiviral drugs to treat COVID-19, Norovirus, influenza, avian flu, West Nile virus, Dengue, Zika, and other RNA viruses. Cocrystal uses its structure-based drug discovery platform to identify promising drug targets for potent broad-spectrum oral and inhaled antiviral therapeutics. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for vaccines and effective therapeutics to respond to viral outbreaks and prevent further transmission.
Sam elaborates, "Before we talk about avian flu, let's just step back up about the strains. Influenza, as you know, includes influenza A strains, influenza B, and the C. But the public health point of view is the influenza A strains are important. These cause the pandemic flu, as well as the seasonal flu. Influenza B is roughly less than 20% of flu patients that have this influenza B. It's seasonal. It doesn't cause a pandemic influenza infection."
"So we're talking about avian flu. Avian flu is mostly an influenza A strain. So, it's often classified as H5N1 or H7N9, depending on the antigen. So, why is it so important? We know this year that people isolate the avian H5N1 from cow and cow milk and humans. Avian flu is normally avian influenza that stays with the birds, the wild birds. What we see here is already past the host barrier. So instead of staying with avian, the birds, or domestic animals, now it's passed to a human. So it's a serious issue that the avian flu, H5N1, actually we see here, not only cow and farm workers are infected with it. That's a really serious concern."
"We believe we have a pretty good understanding. If you look at the 1918 Spanish flu, that was actually classified as an H1N1, but several years ago, with a beautiful molecular analysis, people completed the sequencing analysis with the patient sample from 1918 Spanish flu victims. They isolated the gene. They showed that even those with H1N1 contained the avian flu sequence."
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