"Inside a single-story brick building in Sorrento Mesa is a small lab sprinkled with beakers, test tubes and incubators that is worth billions of dollars. This is where Cidara, a small San Diego pharmaceutical company, created what the scientific community has talked about for decades a kind of universal flu shot that fights all forms of influenza. The most recent clinical trial was so successful that pharmaceutical giant Merck recently announced it would buy the company for $9.2 billion."
"Going viral For centuries, the human body has been playing cat and mouse with the flu. Influenza mutates. The human immune system adapts. Each year, the cycle begins anew in Asia, where novel strains first take hold. After a relatively quick study, Australian hospitals choose what they think is the strain of the season, like Vogue picks the color of the year. Those hospitals then create this year's vaccine, and the rest of the world follows."
A small San Diego lab developed CD388, an antiviral intended to act as a universal flu preventative effective across influenza strains. Clinical results were strong enough to prompt Merck to acquire the company for $9.2 billion. Traditional seasonal influenza vaccines vary in effectiveness and often protect only 30% to 60% of healthy individuals and less in those over 65. CD388 works by preventing the virus from unclipping from the host cell surface after replication, rendering viral particles noninfectious. The company built its approach on applying immunotherapy concepts to infectious disease and reported success in recent clinical testing.
Read at www.sandiegouniontribune.com
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