Forgotten antivirals
There is little money in them.
This post is dedicated to the memory of Dr David Tyrrell and his colleagues in the Common Cold Unit. Good work never fades away.
Antivirals for ILI or any of its agents have a long and very chequered history. We’ve gone back into our archives to a Cochrane review that Tom and David Tyrrell conducted nearly 25 years ago on the role of Antivirals for the common cold.
The review is primarily based on the original records of the Common Cold Unit. Unfortunately, however, the review had to be withdrawn in 2004 because of a common occurrence in our research careers: there were no funds to update it.
The Story of Influenza Antivirals: Part 1
‘The first human influenza virus was isolated in 1933 by Smith, Andrewes and Laidlaw. By the 1950s, there was great interest in developing influenza antivirals, but although many were deemed promising, none made it beyond the first human experiments or even larger trials.
Who wanted to invest in a review of dud drugs? Except there may not have been duds amongst the many compounds.