Posted on 03/10/2020 9:47:12 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
A US biotech firm has ramped up production of an experimental drug that has become a focal point for hopes of an effective treatment for coronavirus.
The first clinical trial of the antiviral medicine remdesivir in Covid-19 patients is due to report its findings next month according to Gilead Sciences, which said it had accelerated manufacturing of the drug to increase its supplies “as rapidly as possible”.
As the coronavirus outbreak has unfolded, about 300 separate trials into different drugs and experimental therapies have been launched in the absence of any established treatments. Many see remdesivir, originally developed to treat Ebola, as a frontrunner and one of the very few drugs that has a reasonable prospect of helping patients in the near-term
“As a therapy, it could potentially help make people’s disease less severe, save lives for those hospitalised, and be used prophylactically for hospital workers and perhaps even in the community to limit spread out there,” said Timothy Sheahan, a virologist who has studied the drug at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. But he added that the wider use of the drug in the unfolding epidemic was “completely contingent on its success or failure in the trials”.
While awaiting these results, doctors in the US, China and Italy are already using remdesivir on a compassionate basis to treat small numbers of patients with severe Covid-19. The first US patient, a 35-year-old man in Snohomish County, Washington, recovered, but the full trials are needed to assess whether the drug reduces the severity of symptoms and, crucially, mortality rates.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
“As rapidly as possible.” Gilead would not be doing this if not seeing beneficial results.
eggs Ackley
I found it interesting that for the name of his company, Founder Michael Riordan drew his inspiration from the history of the ancient Middle East, where a region known as Gilead gained recognition for a medication called the balm of Gilead, considered the world’s first genuine pharmaceutical product.
It is in fact mentioned in the Bible:
* After having cast Joseph into a pit, his brothers noticed a caravan on its way from Gilead to Egypt, “with their camels bearing spicery, and balm, and myrrh” (Genesis 37:25).
* During the final years of the Kingdom of Judah, Jeremiah asks “Is there no balm in Gilead?” (Jeremiah 8:22)
* Still later, from an expression in Ezekiel 27:17, we find that balm was one of the commodities which Hebrew merchants carried to the market of Tyre
“he first clinical trial of the antiviral medicine remdesivir in Covid-19 patients is due to report its findings next month according to Gilead Sciences, which said it had accelerated manufacturing of the drug to increase its supplies “as rapidly as possible”.
Sales, sales, sales. If they play their cards right, they could pull in billions of dollars of added revenue in a very short time.
GLD peaked at 80 a couple of days ago, and has dropped to 70 in the selloff.
“As rapidly as possible.” Gilead would not be doing this if not seeing beneficial results”
Congress needs to get out front immediately and have FDA protocals waivered so drugs roll out fast to the population. In doing so said Companies need some protection from blood sucking Ambulance chasing Lawers. Make the Rats in DC have to vote. Protect their Lawyer constituency or the health and welfare of the rest of America.
There is a hymn “There is a balm in Gilead.”
Whoa...hold your horses a bit there.
One of the reasons why people think this was so bad in China was because the population had been vaccinated for SARS. This thing came along and the result was a cytokine storm that dropped people in the street.
The LAST thing you want to do is rush a vaccine that will come back and bite you in the ass next year. Most people are not going to be affected by this in any negative way. There is more reason to take your time than to rush.
There are reasons for testing this stuff beyond a bureaucracy.
not a vaccine. An antiviral developed against Ebola, but did not work for that.
No. Why would Wuhan be vaccinated for Ebola?
That's one huge time advantage that exploration and application of existing medicines have over de novo development of a preventive vaccine.
Anyone noted that the 2020 US quarter coin has a bat on it?
Maybe we'll get better results from Venezuela, but I doubt it.
I suspect that Sunshine will prove to be the best, perhaps the only truly effective, prophylactic and cure. It is proof against many, perhaps all, sorts of flu and colds. In the cold months when we cover our skin and thus hide from the sun we get the Flu Season which goes away when the air warms up and we go about in short sleeves and hatless. Vitamin D3, being essentially sunshine in a gelcap substitutes admirably for the missing exposure to sunshine in the winter. I and multi relatives started D3 supplementation 15-13 years ago and none of us has had flu or colds since and none of us gets flu shots.
Yeah...except this is not a flu or rhinovirus.
Evidence is pretty strong that this does just fine in a warm climate.
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