The Ultimate Solution is Medical
Current Drug Treatments vs. Vaccines
From my client newsletter:
There are many existing drugs that are being tested on the most serious COVID-19 patients globally. They are being used “off-label” under the “compassionate use” provision of the regulators.
This started after some dramatic positive results in China, and now drug companies in cooperation with major universities and government agencies including the NIH in the US are doing mass trials trying to confirm the results in Asia. CNN interviewed a US patient who went from extremely sick to almost 100% in the matter of a few days with an “off label” drug.
One of the problems in the maybe 20% of COVID-19 patients who have potential deadly cases is that the immune system overly attacks both the virus and the good cells. It appears some drugs that were used for other purposes have been effective in creating a balance: i.e., enough immune reaction to kill the virus, but not to also attack the normal cells of the patient.
Seekingalpha: “Gilead Sciences has an existing drug Remdesivir that was originally developed to target Ebola but has considerable promise for this new coronavirus. Remdesivir was used on the first confirmed case in the U.S. The patient responded well to treatment with all symptoms except a cough resolved within a week. Preliminary data from a trial in China could be out as soon as later this month. Positive results could set up one doozy of a rally in the overall market.”
3/14/2020 Startribune.com: “The University of Minnesota Medical School is testing a drug to see if it can treat people who have been hospitalized for COVID-19. News of the Minnesota study of the antiviral Remdesivir comes as the Wall Street Journal reported Friday that the drug appeared to have a positive effect for a small group of Americans who contracted the new coronavirus on a cruise ship and were treated experimentally in Japan.
“The drug was found not effective in treating Ebola, but an official with the National Institutes of Health said none of the 14 American COVID-19 patients has died since getting the drug. The official described the patients as critically ill and said many of them had been likely to die within a short amount of time.
“Gilead Sciences, which makes Remdesivir, said at least five other COVID-related clinical trials are ongoing in the U.S. and globally.
“Minnesota’s Remdesivir study is one of three randomized controlled clinical trials announced by the U’s Medical School that will use existing drugs to try to treat people who have been exposed to COVID-19. Though vaccine research is underway, vaccines typically take months or years to develop.”
JERUSALEM, March 17 (Reuters) – “Israel's Health Ministry has approved a request by Pluristem Therapeutics to seek case-by-case permission for compassionate treatment of COVID-19 patients with its stem cell therapy.”
The medical media is reporting many other approaches to treat the virus, which if successful could come far sooner than for a vaccine to be available.
Various other reports from multiple sources:
“So-called messenger RNA technology, which uses RNA to tell cells to express a certain protein that then leads to an immune response. Injecting human tissue with the spike's messenger RNA makes it grow inside the body, thereby eliciting an immune response without having actually infected a person with the full-blown virus.
“Other groups are using pieces of raw genetic code which, once injected into the body, should start producing bits of viral proteins which the immune system again can learn to fight.
“Following reports that some COVID-19 patients have had severe immune responses to the virus, including attacks on the lungs, Regeneron and Sanofi are aiming the rheumatoid arthritis drug Kevzara at patients. Kevzara would not treat the underlying virus, just the immune system responses. In China, researchers have been using Roche’s Actemra, a drug similar to Kevzara, to help a small group of patients with severe or critical Covid-19 disease recover.
”Eli Lilly and AbCellera teamed up to co-develop antibody products for the treatment and prevention of the virus. Following the sequencing of 500 unique fully human antibody sequences from a COVID-19 blood sample, the companies will screen the antibodies to find the ones most effective in neutralizing the virus.”
Even more reports are on the huge number of vaccines that have started or applied for authority from the NIAID or similar global heath regulators.
Hopefully COVID-19 can be contained before a vaccine is needed, as was the case with SARS and MERS. The current COVID-19 was originally was named SARS-CoV-2 since it is a variation of the SARs virus. Both are also similar to Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS).
“The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) is allowing new vaccine to be fast-tracked into clinical trials without thorough testing in animal models, which usually stands as a strict prerequisite to human testing.”
The NIAID approved in record time the first US vaccine trial: “A healthy volunteer in Seattle is the first person in the U.S. to receive a dose of an experimental coronavirus vaccine as part of a new clinical trial, government health officials announced today (March 16).
“Over the next six weeks, researchers plan to enroll 45 participants in the trial, which will test the safety of the vaccine as well as its ability to induce an immune response in the volunteers. The trial will take place at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute
Current Drug Treatments vs. Vaccines
From my client newsletter:
There are many existing drugs that are being tested on the most serious COVID-19 patients globally. They are being used “off-label” under the “compassionate use” provision of the regulators.
This started after some dramatic positive results in China, and now drug companies in cooperation with major universities and government agencies including the NIH in the US are doing mass trials trying to confirm the results in Asia. CNN interviewed a US patient who went from extremely sick to almost 100% in the matter of a few days with an “off label” drug.
One of the problems in the maybe 20% of COVID-19 patients who have potential deadly cases is that the immune system overly attacks both the virus and the good cells. It appears some drugs that were used for other purposes have been effective in creating a balance: i.e., enough immune reaction to kill the virus, but not to also attack the normal cells of the patient.
Seekingalpha: “Gilead Sciences has an existing drug Remdesivir that was originally developed to target Ebola but has considerable promise for this new coronavirus. Remdesivir was used on the first confirmed case in the U.S. The patient responded well to treatment with all symptoms except a cough resolved within a week. Preliminary data from a trial in China could be out as soon as later this month. Positive results could set up one doozy of a rally in the overall market.”
3/14/2020 Startribune.com: “The University of Minnesota Medical School is testing a drug to see if it can treat people who have been hospitalized for COVID-19. News of the Minnesota study of the antiviral Remdesivir comes as the Wall Street Journal reported Friday that the drug appeared to have a positive effect for a small group of Americans who contracted the new coronavirus on a cruise ship and were treated experimentally in Japan.
“The drug was found not effective in treating Ebola, but an official with the National Institutes of Health said none of the 14 American COVID-19 patients has died since getting the drug. The official described the patients as critically ill and said many of them had been likely to die within a short amount of time.
“Gilead Sciences, which makes Remdesivir, said at least five other COVID-related clinical trials are ongoing in the U.S. and globally.
“Minnesota’s Remdesivir study is one of three randomized controlled clinical trials announced by the U’s Medical School that will use existing drugs to try to treat people who have been exposed to COVID-19. Though vaccine research is underway, vaccines typically take months or years to develop.”
JERUSALEM, March 17 (Reuters) – “Israel's Health Ministry has approved a request by Pluristem Therapeutics to seek case-by-case permission for compassionate treatment of COVID-19 patients with its stem cell therapy.”
The medical media is reporting many other approaches to treat the virus, which if successful could come far sooner than for a vaccine to be available.
Various other reports from multiple sources:
“So-called messenger RNA technology, which uses RNA to tell cells to express a certain protein that then leads to an immune response. Injecting human tissue with the spike's messenger RNA makes it grow inside the body, thereby eliciting an immune response without having actually infected a person with the full-blown virus.
“Other groups are using pieces of raw genetic code which, once injected into the body, should start producing bits of viral proteins which the immune system again can learn to fight.
“Following reports that some COVID-19 patients have had severe immune responses to the virus, including attacks on the lungs, Regeneron and Sanofi are aiming the rheumatoid arthritis drug Kevzara at patients. Kevzara would not treat the underlying virus, just the immune system responses. In China, researchers have been using Roche’s Actemra, a drug similar to Kevzara, to help a small group of patients with severe or critical Covid-19 disease recover.
”Eli Lilly and AbCellera teamed up to co-develop antibody products for the treatment and prevention of the virus. Following the sequencing of 500 unique fully human antibody sequences from a COVID-19 blood sample, the companies will screen the antibodies to find the ones most effective in neutralizing the virus.”
Even more reports are on the huge number of vaccines that have started or applied for authority from the NIAID or similar global heath regulators.
Hopefully COVID-19 can be contained before a vaccine is needed, as was the case with SARS and MERS. The current COVID-19 was originally was named SARS-CoV-2 since it is a variation of the SARs virus. Both are also similar to Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS).
“The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) is allowing new vaccine to be fast-tracked into clinical trials without thorough testing in animal models, which usually stands as a strict prerequisite to human testing.”
The NIAID approved in record time the first US vaccine trial: “A healthy volunteer in Seattle is the first person in the U.S. to receive a dose of an experimental coronavirus vaccine as part of a new clinical trial, government health officials announced today (March 16).
“Over the next six weeks, researchers plan to enroll 45 participants in the trial, which will test the safety of the vaccine as well as its ability to induce an immune response in the volunteers. The trial will take place at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute
