I don't know how to explain this really. There is NOTHING here that leads me to believe they can create any antiviral treatment that can work.
This patent refers to a very broad, generic technology. It is like patenting fiberglas, then claiming you are about to fly a rocket to the moon based upon this breakthrough technology.
<<the discovery of polymers that can complex with certain types of therapeutic drugs>>
That is simply a variation on a technology that has been around for a half century. What types of therapeutic drugs? Why do they need to be complexed? Most therapeutic drugs that need to get across cell membranes are synthesized as amphipathic or lipophilic molecules, and that allows them to traverse cell membranes.
<<and transport those drugs across cell membranes in cell cultures with demonstrable therapeutic activity.>>
Okay, great. There are zillions of ways to get things across cell membranes. Maybe this is a useful way, but I'd like to see the evidence. BUT even if this is true, viruses don't have "cell membranes"! Generally they do not have a lipid-based coating at all, it is usually a protein coat, totally, totally different. But even if you had something that could "cross" that protein coat, it really wouldn't be much good, because viruses spend very little of their time in that form in places where they can be targeted (e.g., the bloodstream). So at best, you might be able to kill a fraction of the viruses in the blood stream, but right now your immune system can do that anyway. That's not the problem at all.
<<....with demonstrable therapeutic activity.>>
I don't know how they demonstrate this, but I'd sure like to see the details. Usually, therapeutic activity can be suggested, but NOT demonstrated in cell culture. That's because things in cell culture are often wildly different from real life. You can get cells to do all sorts of crazy things they would never do in the body. That is partly the result of the highly artificial conditions of cell culture: remember, cells in the body are not isolated entities at all. They exist in a dynamic state, are highly sensitive to their environment, and are constantly communicating bidirectionally with their surroundings. Most cell culture studies simply cannot be extrapolated to in vivo conditions, and they can be wildly misleading and artifactual if not carefully controlled. That can only be established with suitable in vivo models.
Even if you take a simple example such as tumor cells.... place tumor cells in culture, then treat them with Drug X, and the tumor cells all die, and the non-tumor cells do not. Sounds like you got something, right? Well... encouraging, but the fact is that often drugs that kill tumor cells very effectively in tissue culture either don't work in people, lose their effectiveness eventually, or might even actually promote tumor development and metastasis. Sounds counterintuitive, but that's what's happened. MMP inhibitors are one specific example. People investigated MMP inhibitors as anticancer drugs (actually, to be more precise, mostly for combating metastasis) for at least 30 years. In tissue culture, they produced very encouraging results. Many clinical studies have been performed, and the R&D costs have run into the billions easily. Not one of those clinical studies demonstrate efficacy, and some had to be stopped because the patients treated with the drug did worse than those treated with placebo.
<<The polymers can be used in the development of physiologically stable, non-leaking, non-immunogenic, efficacious and safe targetable drug delivery systems>>
I am very very skeptical of the "non-immunogenic" part. Most such vehicles generate a response, or are not very effective, or cause the target cell to shut down (i.e., the cell kind of gets "stunned"; it doesn't know what hit it so to speak, so it just stops responding figuring, usually correctly, that something is very wrong but it doesn't know exactly what). So the effectiveness would have to be empirically demonstrated, and the evidence subjected to peer review. In house R&D "experiments" are totally worthless.
Check the CVs of these people. They have very little or no real professional evidence of expertise. Just search PubMed for their names (I have). Then compare what you find with somebody like John J. Rossi, who is one of the brains behind Benitec. He's also the Dean of the Graduate Division in Molecular Biology at the Beckman Research Institute and the City of Hope. They don't give fools or cons positions like that. Look at not just WHAT he has published, but WHERE. No comparison. It is like comparing girls T-ball with the World Series.
T |
