Professor Works Out Tamiflu Issue Over Weekend

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.

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