Ebola: Hemispherx Biopharma Expands Research on Potential Ebola Treatments

Dr. William A. Carter who is the Chairman and CEO of Hemispherx Biopharma, a pharmaceutical company that is engaged in the clinical development of new drug therapies based on natural immune system enhancing technologies for the treatment of viral and immune based chronic disorders which includes Ebola joins eHealth Radio and the Pharmaceutical & Health News Channels.
Listen to interview with host Eric Michaels and guest Dr. William A. Carter discuss the following:

• The first case of ebola reported in the United States has caused great concern across the country. What should every citizen know about this virus and how it is spread?
• We understand that the ebola virus has the tendency to mutate as it spreads. What does this mean for the drugs that are currently being used to treat the virus?
• Hemispherx recently announced that the company is involved in five research collaborations designed to develop therapeutic cocktails against Ebola that may potentially overcome the emergence of drug resistance due to Ebola virus mutation. Could you please give us more details?
• If it is found that the company’s platform drugs Alferon N and Ampligen are effective in ebola cocktail therapies under development, what is the next step?

Duration: 11:35
Dr. Carter was a leading innovator in the development of human interferon for a variety of treatment indications including various viral diseases and cancer. In this context, he received the first FDA approval to initiate clinical trials on a beta interferon product manufactured in the U.S. under his supervision.  As the recipient of the first IND to evaluate interferon in the U.S., Dr. Carter led numerous studies resulting in interferon being one of the most widely prescribed therapies in the U.S. Worldwide, interferon is now approved for treatment in more than 50 serious and debilitating diseases.  From 1985 to October 1988, Dr. Carter served as the Company's Chief Scientific Officer. He received his M.D. degree (with high honors) from Duke University and underwent his post-doctoral training at both the National Institutes of Health in Allergy and Infectious Disease as well as on the Osler Medical Services of Johns Hopkins University. Thereafter, he joined the Department of Medicine and Microbiology and worked closely with Dr. Daniel Nathans who received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his pioneering work in understanding the genetic code. He thereafter became Professor of Medicine at the University of New York at Buffalo as well as Chairman of the Department of Microbiology. Following his Buffalo, NY experiences, he returned to Philadelphia, PA where he served as Director of Clinical Research for the Hahnemann Medical University's Institute for Cancer and Blood Diseases, as well as a visiting Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He was a distinguished recipient of the Research Career Award from the National Institutes of Health while serving on the faculty of Johns Hopkins Medical University.  This Research Career Award allowed him to participate in a broad range of studies of the body’s natural antiviral control system and gain a better understanding of the body’s antiviral pathways. He is a Board certified physician, licensed to practice medicine (Internal Medicine is his specialty), and licensed in Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, and North Carolina. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, American Society for Clinical Investigation, and author of more than 250 scientific articles, including the editing of various textbooks on antiviral and immune therapy which are widely used in medical school education.
In addition to his peer reviewed articles on antiviral therapy in human immunology, he has edited several textbooks and one, entitled “Selective Inhibitor of Animal Viruses”, has gone through more than 10 printings and is widely circulated in medical school classes.  He was Principal Investigator on numerous large National Institutes of Health Program Project Grants in the area of antiviral and immunotherapy, with annual budgets of several million dollars. Private investments in his science and research have exceeded $500 million. Conspicuous in his achievements have been case studies of first reports of complete responses in chronic viral hepatitis and multiple sclerosis.  Dr. Carter initiated some of the first clinical studies in a number of diseases in which interferon is now the treatment of choice, including chronic viral hepatitis and multiple sclerosis. He is the inventor, or co-inventor, of several hundred patents on pharmaceutical products.
He is considered an expert in treatment of a variety of diseases including Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), and is a leading innovator in treatment of the enigmatic disease Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS).  At present, he is mounting a program with a partner biotech company in South Africa in which the effort is to cure HIV/AIDS by strategic use of alpha interferon and/or Ampligen®, an immunomodulatory product co-discovered while at Johns Hopkins University, to be added after partial removal of the AIDS virus by traditional HIV/AIDS cocktails. The purpose of this programs effort is to remove trace amounts of AIDS virus which still exists in so-called sanctuary areas of the body following effort of AIDS cocktails to remove residual virus by immuno scavenging, a unique approach embodied in alpha interferon and Ampligen®.
The recent successful experiments in a National Institutes of Health laboratory inhibiting the MERS virus were an intellectual product of Dr. William Carter and clinical colleagues at Hemispherx.
Dr. Carter, the co-inventor of Ampligen®, has served as the Hemispherx's Chief Scientific Officer since May 1989, the Chairman of the Company's Board of Directors since January 1992, the Company's Chief Executive Officer since July 1993, the Company's President since April 1995, and a Director since 1987.

Website: www.hemispherx.net