thinkpol | “New drug could cure nearly any viral infection,” read the headline
on MIT News nine years ago that heralded the arrival of DRACO, a new
antiviral approach that vanquished every single virus that it came up
against.
Double-stranded RNA Activated Caspase Oligomerizer(DRACO) was
promised to do to viruses what antibiotics had done to bacteria — turn
life threatening viral infections into easily treatable conditions[1].
DRACO acts as an antiviral “kill switch” by identifying infected cells and killing those cells to terminate the infection.
The drug’s remarkable success is attributed to its ability to target a
type of RNA produced only in cells that have been infected by viruses.
Bioengineer Todd Rider and his team at MIT’s Lincoln Lab tested their
drug against 15 viruses, and found it was effective against all of them
— including rhinoviruses that cause the common cold, H1N1 influenza, a
stomach virus, a polio virus, dengue fever and several other types of
hemorrhagic fever[2].
And some researchers believe that DRACO could take on the SARS-CoV-2,
the coronavirus that’s causing the current global COVID-19 pandemic[3].
You’d think that national health agencies and pharmaceutical
companies would be rushing to mass manufacture a DRACO as a weapon
against COVID-19. But you’d be wrong.
In fact, the development of DRACO had ground to a halt after falling
into the well-known “Valley of Death”, in which many promising new drugs
struggle to find funding to bridge the gap between proof-of-concept
experiments and later large-scale development and trials.
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