This was from the last CC: JM: Swine flu, we wo
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JM: Swine flu, we worked on, and Eric can opine on this area. He did a lot of work on swine flu; swine flu is acting up in China, all the pig handlers now have been tested and most of them have swine flu, it is starting to creep out. We believe it could be the next potential pandemic problem and China--our partners in China--want to make that the next initiative which is swine flu, and we all contracted with them for them to potentially start the work in that process just as soon as they get their IND approved in China from the Chinese regulators.
So, it's an area that we're watching closely; we now have enacted our infectious disease side where we were focusing mainly on cancer our platform technology; it's an infectious disease and we believe we can respond quickly; we know that China will be able to respond quickly because that's where most of the cases are right now.
But yes, we've been looking at that. And Eric, maybe you can upon on the avian flu piece of it. I didn't know that that was potentially enacting up again, but if it is?
Caller: Sorry, that was my mistake. I meant to say swine flu, not avian flu.
EvH: Oh, swine. So, swine flu, as I said, it is acting up; there have been reported cases; it can light up very quickly. As we know from SARS CoV 2002, these viruses get better, they get stronger, they get more proficient in protecting itself; they mutate much more like we're seeing now with SARS-CoV-19; and they have one job, and that job is to infect you and kill you. So, it could be a problem and I’d love to hear my team, their opinions on what's going on with swine flu. And Eric, maybe you can start off because you did so much work back in the day with swine flu.
Yeah, sure. So, just to clarify: the swine flu, the H1N1 and the Avian was H5N1. So, we actually did start looking at the H5N1, the Avian flu, but we looked at a region of the hemoglobin gene--so, this is the H gene which happens to be H5 and Avian H1 in swine, and it turned out that those regions where we identified vaccine peptides were 100 percent conserved between the avian flu and swine flu. So, while we initiated work on H5N1, we actually had vaccine peptides, they were good for both of them, so both H5N1 and H1N1 swine.