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Professor Works Out Tamiflu Issue Over Weekend

SATURDAY MAY 6 2006 11:00 PM

Submitted by Christopher. Edited By Christopher.

Right now, countries outside of the United States are stockpiling the drug Tamiflu (oseltamivir) to prepare for a Bird Flu epidemic. Tamiflu seems to be the only anti-viral drug that can help people with the flu, and the United States is sorely under stocked with approximately 2 million doses for 295 million people. France has enough to cover 23.8% of its population, and Great Britain has enough Tamiflu to cover 25% of its population. A new plant to produce Tamiflu isn’t going to be up and running until the middle of this year. Some kind of medical breakthrough is desperately needed.

Enter Nobel laureate Elias Corey.

Elias Corey's hope is that his novel approach will mean the drug is cheaper to manufacture and more plentiful.
It took him just a few minutes to work out the method while relaxing at home one weekend, the US researcher says.
Tamiflu is the anti-viral drug of choice in the world preparations for possible pandemic flu.
The Swiss manufacturer Roche has given the World Health Organization five million courses of treatment to help stamp out any incipient outbreak of the disease at source.
And with the help of global partners, the company promises to be producing four hundred million courses a year by 2007.

The solution that he worked out over the weekend has to do with how the drug is manufactured. One of the key ingredients is star anise, a plant found in China that can only be harvested once a year. The active ingredient in the plant contains a carbon ring that “has no anti-viral properties” but is used to build the rest of the anti-viral drug as a “template.”

"I happened to be at home one Saturday morning, and I took some time out to think about the problem, and within a few minutes I came up with some ideas for solving it," he told the BBC's Science in Action programme.
"I called some of my students, and said, 'would you like to try something that could save many lives', and they agreed."
Just eight weeks later, the whole process had been worked through and refined, and the product compared with genuine Tamiflu. The recipe is described in the online edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Using Corey’s method, four hundred million doses can be created in the next year.

Next weekend, Corey might tackle his overgrown garden, solve cancer, and maybe go down to the pub for a pint.

41 Comments

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Christopher

Portland, OR

November 2002

MAY 07, 2006 12:00 AM

vermicious_knid said:
I wonder how much money "Corey" is going to make for Donald Rumsfeld in this newest hoax ???

Can't wait for Bush's "martial law plan"

Keep pluggin' away there "Corey."

Then it's probably a good thing Corey patented the process.

BurningKrome

San Jose, CA

April 2005

MAY 07, 2006 12:20 AM

Well...profit mongering aside (I actually thought Roche...and thus Gilead...opened the rights for others to manufacture Tamiflu) kudos to Corey for working out the solution...but the biggest concern with Tamiflu is that it is only mildly effective against current strains of this bird flu and is likely to be even less effective against a mutated strain.

I mean, it's great and all...better than nothing...but Tamiflu is likely to be little more than a band aid anyway.

Then it's probably a good thing Corey patented the process.

Well...a patent is great, but it's not like he and his students will be mixing the stuff up in their kitchen. A patent just means he can sell the process for a huge (and well deserved) sum of money to a giant pharmaceutical company, like...oh say...Roche.

[Edited on May 07, 2006 12:22AM]

Callahan

Seattle, WA

February 2005

MAY 07, 2006 01:00 AM

This whole Epidemic/Tamiflu thing reminds me of a Tom Clancy Novel I read parts of once.

Nixie

United Kingdom

March 2006

MAY 07, 2006 04:28 AM

Does anybody else remember SARS?

If it's not one thing, it's another.

Mark_plus_Beer

United Kingdom

August 2005

MAY 07, 2006 04:30 AM

I've been assured i get my dosage , sometimes working for a government agency does pay off

Aprhael

I'm lost

February 2006

MAY 07, 2006 04:40 AM

This whole bird flu thing sucks.. I don't believe that it will start epidemic. And if it will, tamiflu won't work for it.

ps. "countries outside of the United States".. how many countries there is inside of the US?

TheFuckOffKid

NEWSWIRE

Australia

MAY 07, 2006 04:43 AM

aprhael said:
ps. "countries outside of the United States".. how many countries there is inside of the US?

I think Wisconsin, Madison, is a whole other country to Lubbock, Texas, but maybe that's just me.

And NYC is a country in and of itself.

TheFuckOffKid

NEWSWIRE

Australia

MAY 07, 2006 04:45 AM

Oh, not to mention California...

fountainofdreams

Mokena, IL

January 2005

MAY 07, 2006 06:19 AM

Callahan said:
This whole Epidemic/Tamiflu thing reminds me of a Tom Clancy Novel I read parts of once.

i was thinking that myself. some sort of ebola treatment in the novel, that would actually kill people?

OctoberSeven

Downers Grove, IL

December 2002

MAY 07, 2006 07:01 AM

Meh...... The bird flu has gotten boring. Can we move on to the next epidemic-waiting-to-happen already?

pogojoe

Lanham, MD

March 2004

MAY 07, 2006 07:45 AM

jnfuk said:
Does anybody else remember SARS?

If it's not one thing, it's another.

Except of course for SARS not having killed millions in the past. 1931 pandemic flu did just that.

dickie

Providence, RI

June 2004

MAY 07, 2006 09:12 AM

Awesome!

skeptik

New Orleans, LA

February 2004

MAY 07, 2006 10:05 AM

vermicious_knid said:
I wonder how much money "Corey" is going to make for Donald Rumsfeld in this newest hoax ???

Can't wait for Bush's "martial law plan"

Keep pluggin' away there "Corey."

Much as I despise the Twunt, and as bad as the Chimpster's martial law proposal is, Avian Flu is not a hoax. It might be merely a scare, but it is no hoax.

And as for the Twunt's stake in Roche (Gilead), I think you're a bit of the mark there.

(from your link)

Rumsfeld recused himself from any decisions involving Gilead when he left Gilead and became Secretary of Defense in early 2001. And late last month, notes a senior Pentagon official, Rumsfeld went even further and had the Pentagon's general counsel issue additional instructions outlining what he could and could not be involved in if there were an avian flu pandemic and the Pentagon had to respond.

As the flu issue heated up early this year, according to the Pentagon official, Rumsfeld considered unloading his entire Gilead stake and sought the advice of the Department of Justice, the SEC and the federal Office of Government Ethics.

Those agencies didn't offer an opinion so Rumsfeld consulted a private securities lawyer, who advised him that it was safer to hold on to the stock and be quite public about his recusal rather than sell and run the risk of being accused of trading on insider information, something Rumsfeld doesn't believe he possesses. So he's keeping his shares for the time being.

So, while I would wish that situations like this would never arise, we live with capitalism and publicly-traded stocks. Anybody can own shares of their stock. Even you or me.

Incidentally, the world saw three major flu pandemics in the 20th century, the worst being the first. It started in 1918, affecting first the soldiers coming back home from WWI. It was known as the Spanish Flu, and the pandemic lasted for three years. It sickened half a billion people at a time when the world's total population was less than 2 billion. It is estimated to have killed at least 40 million.

And it was caused by the virus H1N1 - a strain of bird flu.

[Edited on May 07, 2006 by skeptik]

SirPsychoSexy

Ridgewood, NJ

January 2004

MAY 07, 2006 10:05 AM

Even if it doesn't work very well, when used correctly on say 1000 infected people and it helps 15% of them, then there are 15% less vectors and the virus spreads slower.

Though still probably not as effective as everyone just washing their goddamn dirty hands.