Hi,
Thanks for your continued interest in Kimer Med.
An important long-term public relations issue for us is basic awareness of the existence and nature of antiviral drugs. For example, many people aren’t aware of the difference between antivirals and vaccines. In particular, that good, effective, antivirals can be curative in nature, and they can normally be administered for some time after an infection has started. Antivirals attack viruses in one way or another, generally without directly relying on the immune system. This is analogous to how antibiotics attack bacteria.
This is unlike vaccines, which generally need to be administered before you are infected (though there are a few exceptions to this rule), and which are normally designed to pre-arm your immune system to fight the virus if you are exposed after vaccination. In general, vaccines also don’t take effect immediately; there’s some delay while your immune system develops a response. Certain vaccines, such as the one for Dengue Fever, can only be administered after you’ve already had the underlying disease once (sadly, the Dengue vaccine is also only about 60% effective).
A few more facts about antivirals that may be of interest:
The first antiviral drug, idoxuridine, was approved in 1963. Since then, 90 antivirals categorized into 13 functional groups have been formally approved for the treatment of only 9 total viruses: HIV, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, Herpes, Influenza, CMV, Varicella-Zoster, RSV, and HPV.
Antiviral drugs are normally highly targeted and virus-specific, and tend to lose efficacy if (when) viruses mutate. Tamiflu is an infamous example of how an initially effective antiviral stopped working after Influenza mutated.
There are at least 219 known human viral diseases.
There are currently no approved broad-spectrum antiviral drugs (like broad-spectrum antibiotics).
There are a few antibiotics, antiparasitics and supplements, such as azithromycin, IVM and Vitamin C, that have some antiviral properties. However, those compounds generally aren’t as effective as focused antivirals.
Any help you might be able to provide in getting the word out about the existence and nature of antivirals would be greatly appreciated.
We believe our VTose™ antiviral will end up being both broad-spectrum and resistant to viral mutations, which is a big part of what makes us different.
Regards,
–Rick