Nanoviricides (NNVC.OB) is an Indian high-tech company working with heavy infusions of venture capital to bring nanotechnology to the search for ways of attacking the H5N1 (bird flu) virus. The CEO of Nanoviricides recently made a presentation to the 5th International Bird Flu Conference on his progress to date. Here are three paragraphs from a press release on the subject:

Dr. Seymour [CEO of Nanoviricides] compared the various treatment options currently available to the practitioner working on the front lines. "Speakers from Vietnam, Indonesia and Turkey made it clear," said Seymour, that "at the present time, no good treatment options exist. These speakers complained that patients sought medical care too late for Tamiflu® — the drug currently recommended by WHO — to be effective. They also pointed out that resistance to Tamiflu develops quickly. Vaccines may be ineffective in the field due to the antigenic drift caused by the observed rapid mutation rate of the influenza virus, according to these physicians. They fear that antibodies alone also will be ineffective as drugs in the field due to the antigenic drift."

"Mutations and antigenic drift should not allow influenza viruses, even H5N1, to escape FluCide-I," said Dr. Seymour. "Similarly, FluCide-HP attacks the invariant features of the signature region that causes high pathogenicity in avian influenza viruses such as H5N1 and H7N3. If a high path virus learns to evade FluCide-HP, it would have lost this signature, and would therefore no longer be highly pathogenic. Thus it would pose only a minimal threat as a pandemic agent," he added.

"We are now working on the necessary paperwork with an agency to begin animal studies against the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus," he reported.

Loren

Disclosure: I own 600 shares of Nanoviricides.