FSU research team makes Zika drug breakthrough | Hacker News Reader

FSU research team makes Zika drug breakthrough

news.fsu.edu

147 pointsnikunjk21 comments

Strange, apparently they only blinded themselves for two western blots that didn't even deserve a place in the main paper. I have found this is an extremely common issue with virology studies:

>"The screening of two subsets of compounds for antiviral activity (Supplementary Fig. 2a and Supplementary Fig. 4b) was performed in a blinded manner, whereas all other experiments were performed in a nonblinded manner." http://www.nature.com/nm/index.html

Also, I searched for the virus strain they used and the first thing I clicked on claimed it has issues with relevance in vivo:

>"Anyone who is using viruses termed ZIKV MR766 needs to carefully examine the sequence composition of their stocks. Multiple viruses all termed MR766 may have different sequences and biological properties.In the case of the MR766 we are using in our studies, there is a deletion in the challenge stock that is strongly selected against quickly in vivo." https://zika.labkey.com/wiki/OConnor/ZIKV-002/page.view?name...

TL;DR, the identified/named drug that may be repuposed to prevent Zika virus is called Niclosamide, wikipedia has already been updated[1] with its side benefit :)

Nicolsamide is also listed as WHO's "one of the most important medications needed in a basic health system."[1]

There should be more drug repurposing researches to be done but it's probably profit-prohibiting for the big pharmas :(

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niclosamide

Was the "big pharma" snark really necessary? Seems to me drug repurposing would be a huge profit-maker.

Unfortunately since they get paid on IP, it's more like the opposite. A minor revision to replace a proved drug with a re-patentable version is a little work for a lot of money; proving a new use for an out-of-patent drug is a lot of work for very little money.

I don't necessarily agree with the snark but we'd probably be better off if more medical research were not profit-motivated.

> proving a new use for an out-of-patent drug is a lot of work for very little money.

That's not entirely true. There are programs in the US and UK which offer "marketing exclusivity" for companies that perform trials validating new uses for existing drugs. These aren't exactly patents, but it does provide a financial incentive.

I'm curious what about that you think was snark, or if you're just offended by the phrase.

Yep, surprisingly, research is done here. We don't just have a football team.

Don't forget the circus: http://circus.fsu.edu

Wow, a place where you can run away and join the circus and fulfill your parents expectations of being a doctor.

It's a pretty damned good circus, too, for something put on by volunteer students.

Most people don't realize how big our research programs are.

http://www.fsu.edu/highlights/rankings.html has some interesting tidbits on our rankings.

Ah, but even then didn't you have a football player accepted as a Rhodes Scholar a few years back?

... Yes, I recall correctly. Myron Rolle. Played two years in the NFL then returned to FSU medical school.

I am surprised! When I was applying for college as an IT major some 11 years ago this was one of the school I applied to. As an international student however the wanted me to jump through too many hoops so I did not pursue my degree there.

Maybe I missed the sarcasm, but FSU's football team has been ranked well several times recently.

Of course, I'm from UF....so maybe I should be agreeing with you ;)

saw this on my fb feed this morning and tbh, was glad the fsu actually got some headline room. personally not connected to fsu but I see so many MIT... that some of these other institutions doing big things get lost in the shuffle.

also really liked the search strategy. first try all the things already approved by the fda to find something, even if not 100% ideal since its so much faster than seeking fda approval of something new. Curious how this will change in the near future given the prevalence of deep learning and with some of the opentrons type testing systems.

>also really liked the search strategy. first try all the things already approved by the fda to find something, even if not 100% fast.

Yup. On the one hand it's unfortunate that they have to do this at all, on the other hand this may be a larger innovation than the Zika treatments themselves.

In the long run if this approach can be applied to other diseases it'll save many lives.

If anyone else was surprised by the 584 pregnant women living in the US that are believed to have been infected, the CDC has the same number here:

http://www.cdc.gov/zika/geo/pregwomen-uscases.html

Sounds great. When will we see reputable validation of their extraordinary claims?

You got downvoted for this, but this is exactly the problem with "science" and "journalism" today. They're quick to report any first publication or comment as a huge breakthrough, but they never even hint that it might be a flawed study and that the rest of the scientific process (verifying the claim independently) is still yet to come.

Probably never because as 'nonbel' commented, there are issues with their choice of virus strain.

FUCK SHIT UP team

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