Altru Institute to Launch Virus Project to Find Breakthroughs in Treatment of COVID-19
NEW YORK, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- New York think tank, Altru Institute has organized the Altru Global Virus Project to aggregate and curate the best information globally and to foster collaboration among scientists, physicians and entrepreneurs developing cures and treatments worldwide. It has produced its first summary report on a Princeton based company, Sonnet BioTherapeutics Holdings, Inc. (SONN) which has a technology that may be highly applicable to the treatment of viruses.
"This pandemic is the greatest challenge we have faced and is existential. Only through unprecedented cooperation and collaboration by our best minds can we address this challenge. Our goal is to create a platform for this collaboration free of interference by politics and special interests," said Brett Johnson, co-founder of Altru and Director of the Virus Project.
The project's first objective is to publish an initial study that looks at COVID-19 and what makes it unique and then post this research and seek input from scientists around the world to comment on our initial research. We are pleased to have recruited Tom Malcom, PhD, CEO of biotech start-up Iron Hills Bioengineering, to our Science Advisory Board.
"A fundamental approach is to identifying specific teams of scientists at universities and at private companies that are developing new approaches. Our focus is on the little known entities, start-ups with what may be breakthroughs," said Johnson.
The first project being reviewed is a start-up that went public on April 2 of 2020. The Princeton based Sonnet Biotherapeutics has an interesting "Trojan Horse" approach that appears to have considerable promise.
According to Malcolm, "The team at Sonnet has developed a unique platform that leverages several favorable biological properties of human serum Albumin. They have invented and developed an ingenious approach that converts endogenous albumin into a drug-loaded and/or immune stimulatory Trojan Horse that is taken up by unknowing cancer cells, leading to their destruction."
Their core technology which was designed for Cancer is a delivery mechanism that can be applied to Viruses. We analyzed the company to better understand what they are doing and how their technology works.
An initial analysis of the Sonnet Biotherapeutics has been carried out by the Altru Institute Virus Project. To view the summary visit https://www.thevirusproject.org/research-reports/
To learn more about the Virus Project contact [email protected]
SOURCE Altru Institute
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