NNVC - Vaccines and Therapeutic Development

In a press release announcing a new VP of Research and Development, NNVC's President specifically addressed some issues we have been discussing here.

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The Company President, Dr. Anil Diwan, has received many inquiries from its shareholders questioning the vaccines and other therapeutic treatments that are being developed by other companies for H5N1 and he responded:

"The history of H5N1, as well as that for human influenza, suggests that the vaccines that provide 100% protection against the strain for which they were developed, will provide between 60% to 80% protection the following year yet diminish every year, requiring constant new vaccine development.

Total vaccination (i.e. 300 million doses for US alone, and 5 billion doses for the entire world) is required for a vaccine approach to be effective. This is unlikely to be accomplished.

Vaccines alone cannot control Bird Flu (H5N1) and other highly pathogenic influenza organisms from wreaking worldwide havoc. It is also necessary to develop specific, targeted anti-viral therapeutic agents such as AviFluCide-I(TM) to help both contain outbreaks as well as treat those patients who have not received a prior vaccination.

The world's scientists expect that H5N1 will continue to mutate and become more transmissible and less virulent over time. This means fatality rate (currently 60%-80%) will decrease some, but number of cases will rise sharply.

Given the mutations and antigenic drift, because of which vaccines will always have limited effectiveness in control, new treatments such as ours, will be essential.

To our knowledge, NanoViricides is currently the only company that is developing drugs specifically against H5N1 itself although there may be efforts afoot at many pharmaceutical companies that are still unknown to us."