Ennaid's Harrison on Developing Cure for the Zika Virus (Audio) - podcast episode cover

Ennaid's Harrison on Developing Cure for the Zika Virus (Audio)

Aug 15, 20168 min
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Episode description

(Bloomberg) -- Taking Stock with Kathleen Hays and Pimm Fox. GUEST: HEALTHCARE: Former microbiologist Darnisha Grant Harrison, CEO of Ennaid Therapeutics, on developing a technology that shows 99% effectiveness against the Zika virus, and the company's plans to be the first-to-market with a cure.

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Transcript

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Global business news twenty four hours a day. If Bloomberg dot com, the radio plus mobile last and on your radio. This is a Bloomberg Business Flash from Bloomberg World Headquarters. On Katherine Caldery Bloomberg Taking Stock is brought to you by the accountants and advisors at Eisner Emperor. Are you in denial about succession issues? Eisener Amper can help you plan for your future and the future of your company.

Learn more at eisener Amper dot com. Slash legacy. We talk the markets every fifteen minutes throughout the trading day. Let's go over to the First Word Breaking news desk for today's afternoon call with Bill Maloneyville. Good afternoon, Catherine gains for the man U S savages today, with the Dow currently hired by seventy four points, SUBS gain eight and AzaC rises thirty two. The small cap six hundred rises seven points. In the U S tenny yield at

one point five. Seven out of ten be sectors are higher, led by gains and Materials, Industrials and Energy, Telecom, consumer staples and utilities. Dow Transports climb sixty six and as a biotechs outperform gained one percent and the utilities fall one point three percent down. Leaders to the upside included DuPont, Bollman, Saxe, and Caterpillar, while Walmart, United Health m McDonald's led to

the downside. Micrond gained as much as five percent to the highest since December, while Apple rose one point two percent to its highest since April. Live from the First Breaking News desk gone Bill Maloney, Katherine, thank you bellen to hear line breaking news over your Bloomberg type s q U A K on your terminal, and that's a Bloomberg business flash. Now on Bloomberg Radio, we take stock

of healthcare. The giessue of drug pricing has been at the forefront, certainly in the political realm for the last few months. We're living in a very special time in the history of the pharmaceutical industry. Only three percent of all biotechs that start actually get a drug approved. It's a very hard thing to do. Bloomberg taking stock Healthcaren focus on Bloomberg Radio. The Zica virus has been one of the dark clouds hanging over the Olympics in Rio

de jan Narrow. In fact, the virus emerged there back in probably introduced in the country, uh in the latter half of according to our Bloomberg intelligence team, and of course now there are concerns that it will spread further across North America and continue to show up in Europe. Enter Darnish Darnisia Grant Harrison. She's president and CEO of an aid therapeutic She's based in Alfaretta, Georgia, joining us

in our studio today. Uh. She is the CEO of a global pharmaceutical company that is developing anti viral drugs to treat this Zeka virus. Not a moment too soon, Darnisia, Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. So, uh, what are you developing in particular? So we are actually developing anti viral treatments. So these are actually drugs. Um. We love to use one analogy. If your households on fire, what do you want the fire department to come or

a fire inspector to come? I bet you'd want to fire the fire department. So we are like the fire department. When you get zekea virus, we would then put it out. M vaccines, on the other hand, are much like fire inspectors. UM. It sort of prevents you, um from getting Zeka virus. What we have come to realize in the infectious diseases world is that therapeutics, so drugs such as that we're developing and vaccines really play a complimentary role in helping

to control and ultimately eradicate diseases such as zeca. Now I need some help with a little science because I need to know in order to understand more what is a peptide inhibitor and connect the zekra virus to what we know about dan gay fever, because I understand that there is a connection. Yes, there is. So I'll start with the ladder um. Both Ezeka and dengie, as well as less nile virus and many others, are from the

same family of viruses called the flavor Veridae family. Even furthermore closely related there from the same genus of this family, the flavor virus genus, And each of these viruses that you've just mentioned had the same mechanism of action of infecting healthy cells within the body. Okay, So that answers that question. Now the first question, what's a peptide and what does it mean? Um? It's essentially a protein. Okay. Um,

We're all very very familiar with um insulin. Okay. Insulin is a protein very similar okay to to put it simply um and the peptide inhibitors are drugs that stop the peptide in our case, from buying ding to the healthy hostel. If it can't bind, then it theoretically should not be able to infect healthy cell. So that's what we are developing in particular, peptide binding inhibitors. Journey. So you're normally a woman heading up a very exciting pharmaceutical company.

You're also the first African American woman in the world to be founder, president, CEO of a pharmaceutical company. Microbiologist, scientist, business development in a nutshell, how did you get here? Thank you for asking, um, And I will qualify that I'm one of the first African American I have to be politically correct here, but UM, you know, I majored UM and became a microbiologist and a chemist and really enjoyed being a scientist. But I didn't want an advanced degree.

I had a Bachelor of Science in both and so I was working in pharma at am Gen at the time many moons ago, and I said, you know, what would I want to do with my career that could really marry both my scientific acumen, but then I could learn the business side, and that's what I segued into business development and licensing, but in the niche area of pharmaceutical research and development, and I stayed there for about fifteen years, but five years in I just had this

really deep passionate desire to have my own pharmaceutical company and focus on early stage, promising science. It's a known fact that there is about a twenty year backlog of good scientific discoveries that could be used in human health and animal health, but most companies don't focus there, and that's where we differ. And eight Therapeutics is privately held. Tell us a little quickly about funding and also the pipeline. Where are you in the testing of this work? Absolutely

so funding. We are essentially what we would call a self funded company and that I am our largest investor. And we've done a very successful family and friends round of funding UM having utilized with our rays right at about one million dollars okay, and we've got some other very aggressive activities going with funding now UM and we are in the pre clinical stages finishing up the animals studies and on track to be in first time in

man human trials by Q one. Thank you very much for coming in and sharing all this information with us. Darnisia Grant Harrison, the president and the chief executive of an Aid Therapeutics. They're based in Alpharetta, Georgia. This is Bloomberg. Bloomberg taking Stock is brought to you by land Over Manhattan, where New York goes for luxury. Conveniently located a fifty four and eleventh Avenue online at lander Manhattan dot com. Landroom Manhattan is at your service.

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