Hemispherx Reports Biosecurity Program to Potentially Reduce Pandemic Flu Threat

Hemispherx Biopharma

announced that at the 2^nd International Conference on Biodefense and Natural Disasters meeting in Orlando, FL on August 22, 2013, Professor Dr. Juergen A. Richt, DVM, Ph.D., a scientific advisor to Hemispherx, described his experiments in human lung cells evidencing that Alferon N Injection®, the only multi-species, natural interferon approved in the U.S. for the treatment of human refractory HPV genital warts, is biologically active, in low doses, against various classes of viruses occurring naturally in animals and humans. Dr. Richt is the Director of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence for Emerging and Zoonotic Animal Diseases, the Regents Distinguished Professor at Kansas State University, and an Eminent Scholar of Kansas Bioscience Association. The increasing prevalence of oseltamivir-resistant Influenza A viruses, particularly H7N9, has been widely reported and is due in large part to the fact that just a single-step mutation in the neuraminidase gene of this genetically unstable virus makes it resistant to oseltamivir (Tamiflu, Relenza). Dr. Richt reported on this instability in 2010 in the peer-reviewed Journal of General Virology, an international journal.