Matrix Pharma developes drug against avian influenza
The drug is expected to be on the market within eighteen months. It will protect
the cell under attack on the level of its healthy functioning, which will prevent
the cell from allowing the virus to multiply and thus stop it from spreading
Monday, November 11, 2006: The Israeli pharmaceutical company Matrix Pharma announced
that it has begun to develop an anti-bird flu drug, which is slated to reach the
market within about eighteen months.
Sion Balass, CEO of Matrix Pharma, said, "Although it is no longer making headlines, bird
flu continues to spread. Moreover, recent reports from Malaysia indicate that the disease
is definitely transmitted from man to man and not only by fowl, which was formerly the
case."
According to Balass, "This means that the mutation we were afraid of already exists, and
it is only a matter of time until the disease forms a worldwide health problem."
The death rate among people infected with avian flu is 50%. So far, about 130 people
have died of the disease, most of them in Asia.
The company has applied a different approach in the drug's development – instead of developing
a drug that will neutralize or prevent viruses from penetrating human cells, it is
developing one that will protect the cell under attack in terms of its healthy functioning,
which will prevent the cell from allowing the virus to multiply and thus stop it from
spreading.
The company's scientists, headed by Dr. Marcel Thuerk, have developed a process in
which the drug's action is tested simultaneously with its possible toxicity from the outset.
The platform developed is based on artificial intelligence, which simultaneously optimizes
ten and more indices in all phases of development and screens the source materials tested
in the laboratory, until those substances with the greatest chances of success are
identified in the pre-clinical and clinical trial phases.
