Bird Flu Drug Mass Production Technique Discovered

creepygeek writes to mention a New Scientist article detailing a new process for creating Tamiflu, an antiviral drug currently thought to be our best defense against the bird flu. From the article: "Making Tamiflu is slow, partly because shikimic is hard to get, but also because one step in the process involves a highly explosive chemical called an azide. As a result, Tamiflu can be made only in small batches of a few tens of litres at a time. But Elias Corey of Harvard University - who won a Nobel prize in 1990 for chemical synthesis - and colleagues have devised a new way to make the drug from two cheap, plentiful petrochemicals, acrylate and butadiene."

Re:Real threat? Real solution?

[Anonymous Coward]

D. Rumsfeld...the same guy to bring aspartame (diet cokes) now brings us Tamiflu. Its all bout the money.

RTFWA

[PatrickThomson]

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamiflu [wikipedia.org] and tfa, it seems that the new process which this article is about has been released patent free. IAAOC (I am an organic chemist) and the new synthesis is safer and less dependant on difficult-to-obtain natural precursors. These guys should be applauded for sacrificing a profitable idea for the greater good.

Educate yourself

[GuloGulo2]

"Influenza
                    o The "Asiatic Flu", 1889-1890. Was first reported in May of 1889 in Bukhara, Russia. By October, it had reached Tomsk and the Caucasus. It rapidly spread west and hit North America in December 1889, South America in February-April 1890, India in February-March 1890, and Australia in March-April 1890. It was purportedly caused by the H2N8 type of flu virus and had a very high attack and mortality rate.
                    o The "Spanish flu", 1918-1919. First identified early March 1918 in US troops training at Camp Funstan, Kansas, by October 1918 it had spread to become a world-wide pandemic on all continents. Unusually deadly and virulent, it ended nearly as quickly as it began, vanishing completely within 18 months. In six months, 25 million were dead; some estimates put the total of those killed worldwide at over twice that number. An estimated 17 million died in India, 500,000 in the United States and 200,000 in the UK. The virus was recently reconstructed by scientists at the CDC studying remains preserved by the Alaskan permafrost. They identified it as a type of H1N1 virus.
                    o The "Asian Flu", 1957-58. An H2N2 caused about 70,000 deaths in the United States. First identified in China in late February 1957, the Asian flu spread to the United States by June 1957.
                    o The "Hong Kong Flu", 1968-69. An H3N2 caused about 34,000 deaths in the United States. This virus was first detected in Hong Kong in early 1968 and spread to the United States later that year. Influenza A (H3N2) viruses still circulate today"

None of your other examples prove anything about flu. All it proves it that you never bothered to look up just how dangerous flu pandemics are.

"While they're all threats, they aren't just going to all of a sudden just break out all over the place."

Um, yes actually, that's exactly what will happen with the flu.

"When it explodes, THEN freak out about it, but until then enjoy life."

Yeah, great, why would we be developing effective treatments, exapnding our knowledge of virus pathology, and improving our procedures, when we could be drinking margaritas and listening to reggae.

Newsflash, you lay the groundwork for dealing with outbreaks before they happen. Your stupid plan results in more deaths.

Cytokine Storm == Deadly

[gandreas]

Check out what Michael Osterholm (the former Minnesota state epidemiologist) has to say: http://citypages.com/databank/27/1320/article14219 .asp [citypages.com]:

"H5N1 is the most powerful influenza virus we've seen in modern human history"

and if you don't feel like reading the whole article:

This virus is quite different from what we see with the standard annual flu, and what we saw in 1957 and 1968, because of the cytokine storm it causes. In 1918, the vast majority of the people who died were healthy young people, 20 to 40 years of age. And that was in large part because they had the strongest immune systems.

So the fact that the more healthy you are, the more likely this thing could kill you. Yikes!

some chemistry clarification

[bodrell]

Roche's current production methods use the azide (which is not as hazardous as news articles would have you believe), but their own scientists have already come up with an azide-free route (though it still uses shikimic acid). See for yourself:

J. Org. Chem. 2001, 66, 2044-2051.

"New, Azide-Free Transformation of Epoxides into 1,2-Diamino Compounds: Synthesis of the Anti-Influenza Neuraminidase Inhibitor Oseltamivir Phosphate (Tamiflu)"

Martin Karpf* and Rene Trussardi F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., Pharmaceuticals Division, Non-Clinical Development, Chemical Process Research, Grenzacherstrasse 124, CH-4070, Basel, Switzerland

Google scholar should show at least the first page.

Corey's synthesis is pretty nifty. It just needs FDA approval and Roche has to adopt it. Given that Roche has had an azide-free route available since 2000, I'm thinking the process change is more than trivial. The Chemical and Engineering News article is much more informative, if you have access to that journal, and you like chemical structures.

Re:Educate yourself

[vidarh]

I hear that the British government are setting up contingency plans to dispose of around 300,000 bodies, as a worst-case scenario: that's about one twentieth of the population.

The UK has 60 million inhabitants, not 6 million... So it's 0.5%, not 5%.

Better solution - universal vaccine

[PIPBoy3000]

A new vaccine [yahoo.com] has been developed that targets the part of a flu virus that is conserved between mutations. Admittedly it might not be as effective as a targeted vacciene for a particular strain, but it would likely provide general protection against most flu viruses. So far it's been tested in ferrets (a good human model) and protects against H5N1 avian influenza.

Re:Good News....right?

[gg3po]

It's too bad that our 'biggest hope' is not up to the task...

This is because the purpose of all this "bird flu" fear-mongering, and particularly in relation to Tamiflu®, has nothing to do with protecting the public. It appears to be really just another example of government corruption -- an excuse to funnel large quantities of taxpayer dollars into the pockets of chronies like Donald Rumsfeld and crew [cnn.com]. Turns out all these huge orders placed by the federal government for an ineffective treatment are making certain "private" citizens very wealthy. Wake up, America, your wallet was just raped, again.