Insights

i-Diagnostics Insights: TIRF Labs develops a global non-profit project described at the URL: i-Diagnostics.net, which goal is to prevent future epidemics and minimize the damage from existing diseases. We are uniquely-well positioned in the area of molecular diagnostics and our way to give back to society is to create two clusters of open source platforms that based on our patent-pending technologies TIRF Analytix and i-Diagnostics. TIRF Analytics platform, if available for ~20,000 research groups worldwide, will create a global infrastructure of precision medicine and enable swift localization of outbreaks, rapid drug screening and re-purposing of FDA-approved drugs for prophylactics and treatment of emerging diseases. We believe that for rapidly mutating pathogens re-purposing of previously FDA-approved drugs is an efficient way to prevent emerging pandemics. Several research groups worldwide have already used our TIRF Analytix platform for single molecule biology mechanistic studies, drug discovery, as well as for rapid molecular diagnostics. We envision that price-efficient TIRF Analytix will be available to all research groups worldwide and affordable i-Diagnostics devices will be available to general public. The US government has granted $4.3M for Phase I of our project. We are ready to move to Phase II to make the preventative precision diagnostics available for all.

We have supplied TIRF Analytix products and i-Diagnostics prototypes to several laboratories in the U.S. and abroad. We pledge to make TIRF Analytix and i-Diagnostics open source platforms suitable for a global infrastructure of precision medicine so that accurate diagnostics will be available to everyone. Soon after the outbreak of Corona virus and the emergence of COVID-19 epidemic, our TIRF Analytix customers discovered new, anti-COVID-19 functions of a dozen of previously FDA-approved drugs, including Hydroxychloroquine, Fenofibrate, and Ivermectin; the latter being the champion due to exceptionally low toxicity. Paradoxically, the low cost of Ivermectin turned to be the greatest obstacle of using it in the U.S. and other industrialized countries. The North India state Uttar Pradesh of 231 million people eradicated COVID-19 with Ivermectin treatment program, representing one of the greatest public health achievements in history. It was kept a global secret.

We welcome you to share your opinions and ideas about emerging and propagating pandemics. The COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated that we need a global infrastructure, which would help to prevent, localize and combat pandemics. TIRF Labs’ team is committed to make accurate diagnostics available to everyone. Scientific and technological capabilities for efficient management of pandemics already exist. Scientists and medical professionals have outlined the necessary measures on COVID-19 in the Great Barrington Declaration and in the Open Letter of Belgian Medical Doctors. The same or similar measures and approaches apply to future pandemics.

In 2019-2020 our customers used our TIRF microarray technology to discover and re-purpose FDA-approved old drugs to prevent and cure COVID-19. Dozens of re-purposed drugs have been found efficient for prophylactics and treatment of COVID19, including Ivermectin, Fenofibrate, and Hydroxycholoroquine. I, Dr. Alexander Asanov, used some of them to keep traveling amidst COVID-19 pandemic. Ivermectin is less toxic than aspirin and appears to be the absolute champion – the global solution for COVID-19, most of other RNA viruses, and some of DNA viruses. It is also efficient against Tuberculosis, some other microbial pathogens, certain types of cancer, inflammation, etc, etc. Ivermectin was discovered in the late 1970s. In 2015 The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Drs. William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura for their discoveries of Ivermectin.

Unfortunately, there is a large gap between science, mass media and decision-making politicians. Safety of biological materials for human use, including vaccines and drugs, must be the highest priority in all circumstances. If adverse side-effects and multiple deaths are reported, the biological material must be removed from the market, without any delay.

Vaccines vs. Re-purposing Existing Medicine. The development of new vaccines, even if the pathogen does not mutate, in principle, cannot be fast. Typically, it takes several years. Long-term side effects of genetic materials injected into human body are impossible to predict. Therefore, alternative approach – re-purposing of previously approved drugs (approved for other purposes) to combat new pathogens – appears to be a productive method, which has proven its efficiency in numerous instances over several decades. In the beginning of COVID-19 pandemic dozens of FDA-approved drugs have been found efficient for prophylactics and treatment of COVID-19. Ivermectin, a potent  a potent antiparasitic agent was found to be efficient for for prophylaxis and treatment of COVID-19, as well as most of other RNA viruses, some DNA viruses, and even bacterial infections. The State of Nebraska was the first U.S. state, which approved Ivermectin as COVID-19 treatment. Dr. Ben Carson showed that despite the lack of so-called “gold standard” double-blind studies, we now effectively know that early (off-label) use of the anti-parasite drug Ivermectin can have a significant effect on reducing COVID mortality — especially when used in conjunction with other substances like azithromycin, zinc, and Vitamin D. Running a double-blind study requires large amount of funds — the kind of money that only a new, patented drug–maker could afford, in hopes of selling a high-priced remedy to millions of consumers.  Repurposing off-patent drugs like Ivermectin does not yield the kind of profits that would be necessary to pay back the cost of double-blind studies. So this appears to be the main obstacle for using safe and efficient Nobel-Prize-awarded inexpensive substance – Ivermectin. A remarkable paper has been published on the data explaining “Why COVID-19 is not so spread in Africa: How does Ivermectin affect it?”

Ivermectin

Ivermectin successfully went through numerous clinical trials for prophylaxis and treatment of COVID-19 [https://clinicaltrials.gov/]. See also videos by Dr. John Campbell on YouTube and references to recent original articles that he provided. Repurposing of old drugs for new applications is a common practice in medicine. For example, doctors are giving infants and babies the anti-ED drug Viagra to save them from a life-threatening lung condition. In 2020 the groundbreaking paper on anti-viral use of Ivermectin was published: “Review of the Emerging Evidence Demonstrating the Efficacy of Ivermectin in the Prophylaxis and Treatment of COVID-19” Dr. Pierre Kory,  et alter wrote: “In March 2020, an expert panel called the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) was created and led by Professor Paul E. Marik with the goal of continuously reviewing the rapidly emerging basic science, translational, and clinical data in order to gain insight into and develop a treatment protocol for, COVID-19. At the same time, many centers and groups employed a multitude of novel therapeutic agents empirically and within clinical trials, often during inappropriate time points during this now well-described multi-phase disease. Either as a result of these frequent trial design failures or due to the lack of sufficient anti-viral or anti-inflammatory properties, nearly all trialed agents have proven ineffective in reducing the mortality of COVID-19.

Based on a recent series of negative published therapeutic trial results, in particular the SOLIDARITY trial, this virtually eliminates any treatment role for remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, lopinavir/ritonavir, interferon, convalescent plasma, tocilizumab, and mono-clonal antibody therapy. [Advances] Despite the growing list of failed therapeutics in COVID-19, the FLCCC recently discovered that ivermectin, an anti-parasitic medicine, has highly potent real-world, anti-viral, and anti-inflammatory properties against SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19.

This conclusion is based on the increasing study results reporting effectiveness, not only within in-vitro and animal models, but also in numerous clinical trials from centers and countries around the world. Repeated, consistent, large magnitude improvements in clinical outcomes have now been reported when Ivermectin is used not only as a prophylactic agent but also in mild, moderate, and even severe disease states from multiple, large, randomized and observational controlled trials.

Further, data showing impacts on population wide health outcomes have resulted from multiple large “natural experiments” that appear to have occurred when various regional health ministries and governmental authorities within South American countries initiated “ivermectin distribution” campaigns to their citizen populations in the hopes the drug would prove effective. The tight, reproducible, temporally associated decreases in case counts and case fatality rates in each of those regions compared to nearby regions without such campaigns, suggest that ivermectin is proving to be a global solution to the pandemic. This is now further evidenced by the recent incorporation of Ivermectin as a prophylaxis and treatment agent for COVID-19 in the national treatment guidelines of Egypt as well as the state of Uttar Pradesh in Northern India, populated by 210 million people.”

Recent review article on Ivermectin was published by Formiga FR, Leblanc R, de Souza Rebouças J, Farias LP, de Oliveira RN, and Pena L. “Ivermectin: an award-winning drug with expected antiviral activity against COVID-19,in Journal of Controlled Release Volume 329, 10 January 2021, Pages 758-761: Ivermectin: an award-winning drug with expected antiviral activity against COVID-19.

NIH database contains 10,000+ original research papers and reviews on Ivermectin: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=ivermectin

Fenofibrate, an FDA-approved anti-cholesterol drug also demonstrated efficacy against the newly emergent alpha and beta variants of SARS-CoV-2 in the recent study.

NIH compares Ivermectin and other therapies with current standards of care for COVID-19: https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/tables/table-2e/

What do you think about the current pandemic?  What can we do now to prevent devastating pandemics in the future? Do you think that availability of precise and accurate diagnostics for home use, similar to i-diagnostics, is critical for the current and future efforts? We would be delighted to hear from you.

Visit the website www.i-diagnostics.net to donate to our global project.

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