Hantavirus! Anthrax! SARS! Bioterror! Bird Flu! And now it's Swine Flu!
Dr. John Cheronis thinks he's close to a cure for these and other headline-grabbing diseases.
For 26 years, he's been developing compounds that may inhibit the enzymes that cause the deadly lung inflammation associated with these terrors.
Maybe your chest was crushed in a car accident. Or let's say you were a solider in Iraq and survived a roadside bomb, only to begin inching your way into a body bag because of blast lung. A small-molecule drug, like the kind Cheronis wants to test, may be just the thing you need to keep breathing.
What Cheronis needs now is about $30 million for clinical trials.
"I don't enter into this industry with any illusions that I have the magic bullet," he said. "I just think I've got a good shot at being able to make it work."
Cheronis founded Accuthera LLC in Conifer, Colo., in 2006. He has founded other biotech startups before: Cortech Inc. in 1982 and Source Precision Medicine in 1999.
He knows biotech investing is an enormous risk, particularly with the diseases he targets.
"Some have said that sepsis and acute lung injury have killed more biotech companies than they have people," Cheronis said.
Cheronis has degrees from Stanford and the University of Chicago. He has edited books on experimental pharmacology and written in scientific journals, including "Molecular Medicine." His company was a finalist at the Colorado BioScience Association's BioWest Venture Showcase competition last year. He's also got letters of support from impressive folks at the University of Colorado Health Science Center and a former U.S. Army Brigadier General who now runs hospitals in Chicago.
What he doesn't have is $30 million. And where is he going to get that in a global credit crunch?
Swine flu has a long way to go to earn the fear it has stirred in the media. The ordinary seasonal flu -- which garners comparatively few headlines -- kills more than 35,000 people a year in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but somehow that's not scary.
Big pharmaceutical companies would rather sell erectile dysfunction pills. Why blow $30 million targeting lung inflammations when you could make another television commercial pandering to geriatric horn dogs?
And venture capital? "There is no VC money at all. Period. That's just gone," Cheronis said.
Hedge funds? They're always looking for underfunded biotech companies. "They are shorting the stock," Cheronis said, "because they figure these companies are not going to get the money to keep going."
No need to even mention the once-magic letters, IPO.
And Government? Cheronis said that despite all the rhetoric about saving America from unthinkable biohazards, his requests for government funding are languishing.
He's turned to agencies established to develop medical countermeasures for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear agents. This includes the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority at the Department of Health and Human Services and the Defense Department's Defense Threat Reduction Agency.
His pro-bono lawyer, Ronald Rossi of Snell & Wilmer's Denver office, is writing letters to members of Congress, hoping that the news about swine flu will capture their imaginations.
Americans used to be so much more fearful. In 2001, we had 9/11 and the anthrax attacks. Then came SARS and bird flu. Then came a couple years of no biological threat whatsoever. And then we got bored.
Maybe it's time we really do freak out about swine flu. There's little we can do to protect ourselves besides washing hands.
Risk-adverse capital markets are not funding the small, biotech startups that usually find solutions. And our government is more consumed with the viruses that are eating the banking system.
Cheronis hopes swine flu will finally bust open the piggy bank:
"Either I get one of these contracts, or I'm going to have to find another job."
