Go Lean…Caribbean

Go Lean Commentary:

As related previously, the Zika virus is proving to be a real “4-Letter” word. Many repercussions have emerged in all aspects of societal life: economics, security and governance. The virus first activated in Brazil, then in the Caribbean. Now, there are reported incidences in Florida.

Bienvenido a Miami!

Now the best practice for Public Health officials is to dissuade pregnant women – and all hoping to someday get pregnant – from traveling to Latin America and the Caribbean…

… and now Miami and other Florida destinations.

Considering the economic consequences (tourism), is there any surprise that there is a breakthrough in drug treatment for Zika, and what’s more that this breakthrough is emerging from Florida. This aligns with a previous commentary, that only at the precipice …

Consider this article here of the medical breakthrough:

Title: FSU research team makes Zika drug breakthrough
By: Kathleen Haughney

A team of researchers from Florida State University, Johns Hopkins University and the National Institutes of Health has found existing drug compounds that can both stop Zika from replicating in the body and from damaging the crucial fetal brain cells that lead to birth defects in newborns.

One of the drugs is already on the market as a treatment for tapeworm.

“We focused on compounds that have the shortest path to clinical use,” said FSU Professor of Biological Science Hengli Tang. “This is a first step toward a therapeutic that can stop transmission of this disease.”

Tang, along with Johns Hopkins Professors Guo-Li Ming and Hongjun Song and National Institutes of Health scientist Wei Zheng identified two different groups of compounds that could  potentially be used to treat Zika — one that stops the virus from replicating and the other that stops the virus from killing fetal brain cells, also called neuroprogenitor cells.

One of the identified compounds is the basis for a drug called Nicolsamide, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved drug that showed no danger to pregnant women in animal studies. It is commonly used to treat tapeworm.

This could theoretically be prescribed by a doctor today, though tests are still needed to determine a specific treatment regimen for the infection.

Their work is outlined in an article published Monday by Nature Medicine.

Though the Zika virus was discovered in 1947, there was little known about how it worked and its potential health implications — especially among pregnant women — until an outbreak occurred in South America last year. In the United States, there have been 584 cases of pregnant women contracting Zika, though most of those are travel related. As of Friday, there have been 42 locally transmitted cases in Florida.

The virus, among other diseases, can cause microcephaly in fetuses leading them to be born with severe birth defects.

“It’s so dramatic and irreversible,” Tang said. “The probability of Zika-induced microcephaly occurring doesn’t appear to be that high, but when it does, the damage is horrible.”

Researchers around the world have been feverishly working to better understand the disease — which can be transmitted both by mosquito bite and through a sexual partner — and also to develop medical treatments.

Tang, Ming and Song first met in graduate school 20 years ago and got in contact in January because Tang, a virologist, had access to the virus and Ming and Song, neurologists, had cortical stem cells that scientists needed for testing.

The group worked at a breakneck pace with researchers from Ming and Song’s lab, traveling back and forth between Baltimore and Tang’s lab in Tallahassee where they had infected the cells with the virus.

In early March, the group was the first team to show that Zika indeed caused cellular phenotypes consistent with microcephaly, a severe birth defect where babies are born with a much smaller head and brain than normal.

They immediately delved into follow-up work and teamed with NIH’s Zheng, an expert on drug compounds, to find potential treatments for the disease.

Researchers screened 6,000 compounds that were either already approved by the FDA or were in the process of a clinical trial because they could be made more quickly available to people infected by Zika.

“It takes years if not decades to develop a new drug,” Song said. “In this sort of global health emergency, we don’t have time. So instead of using new drugs, we chose to screen existing drugs. In this way, we hope to create a therapy much more quickly.”

All of the researchers are continuing the work on the compounds and hope to begin testing the drugs on animals infected with Zika in the near future.

The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, FloridaStateUniversity, EmoryUniversity and the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund.

Other institutions contributing to the research are the Zhejiang University School of Medicine in China, Emory University and the Icahn School of Medicine. Emily Lee, a Florida State University graduate student working with Tang, shared the first authorship position with Assistant Professor of Biology at Emory Zhexing Wen and NIH scientist Miao Xu.
Source: Florida State University Press Release – Posted August 29, 2016; retrieved September 3, 2016 from: http://news.fsu.edu/news/science-technology/2016/08/29/fsu-research-team-makes-zika-drug-breakthrough/

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VIDEO – FSU research team makes Zika drug breakthrough – https://youtu.be/E8lfY07yWqY

Published on Aug 29, 2016 – A Florida State, Johns Hopkins and NIH team of researchers has identified existing drug compounds that can both stop Zika from replicating in the body and from damaging crucial fetal brain cells that lead to birth defects in newborns.

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AUDIO – Florida State University SoundCloud – https://soundcloud.com/floridastateuniversity/fsu-researchers-make-zika-drug-breakthrough

FSU researchers make Zika drug breakthrough

Somehow, when it comes to Zika and tourism, there seems to always be some inconvenient truths. This is not the first time, inconvenient truths have emerged with this pandemic; and it will not be surprising if this is not the last time.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean relates that there are economic and security consequences tied to public health crises. It relates the bitter experiences of cancer and the quest to optimize the treatment options for Caribbean citizens. As demonstrated by cancer, and now Zika, health crises bring a lot of governmental complications.

The book does not purport to be a roadmap for public health, but rather a roadmap for elevating Caribbean society by optimizing the economic, security and governing engines in the region. Yet, within this roadmap is the strategy to incentivize medical research and facilitate treatment options and workable solutions. In fact this roadmap invites the community spirit to encourage research and development (R&D), and to invite role models like Professor Hengli Tang and the medical research team at the university in the foregoing story.

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the implementation and introduction of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The CU‘s prime directives are identified with the following 3 statements:

• Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
• Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the economic engines, including the monitoring and response of epidemiological threats.
• Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between CU agencies and member-states.

One feature of the Go Lean roadmap is the emphasis on community ethos. The book explains, that the Caribbean communities must adopt a fundamental spirit, an underlying sentiment, that would inform the beliefs, customs, and practices to embrace research and development. A community ethos for R&D must be purposeful; we cannot accidentally fall into it..

Another feature of the Go Lean roadmap is the adoption of Self-Governing Entities (SGE). These are to be featured as dedicated, bordered grounds that are ideal for medical research and treatment campuses. SGE requires a hybrid governance involving the CU federal agencies and local administrators – at the start-up.

The Go Lean roadmap clearly relates that healthcare and pharmaceutical drug research are important in the quest to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. At the outset of the Go Lean book, in the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 11), these points are pronounced as essential for the Caribbean:

viii.   Whereas the population size is too small to foster good negotiations for products and commodities from international vendors, the Federation must allow the unification of the region as one purchasing agent, thereby garnering better terms and discounts.

ix. Whereas the realities of healthcare and an aging population cannot be ignored and cannot be afforded without some advanced mitigation, the Federation must arrange for health plans to consolidate premiums of both healthy and sickly people across the wider base of the entire Caribbean population. The mitigation should extend further to disease management, wellness, obesity and smoking cessation programs.

Previous blog/commentaries addressed issues related to medical research and drug research & practices, sampled here:

Kudos to the research team at Florida State University; they have responded at a time of crisis for the State of Florida – the only American State with live Zika mosquitoes – and have forged a solution. This is a fine lesson for the Caribbean to learn …

… Zika is a crisis, and a “crisis would be a terrible thing to waste”.

One local community, Wynwood, in Miami is ground-zero for the Zika battleground. Their current disposition is that business output in the affected areas has been retarded. As related in this article, this summer season has been slower than normal – the peak time is in the winter months:

Zika changes a way of life in Wynwood

After more than 15 local cases of the Zika virus in Wynwood — the first instance of the virus spreading within continental U.S. borders — the artsy district quickly became “ground zero” for the exotic illness.

“It’s definitely slowed down business considerably,” an employee at Fireman Derek’s Bake Shop said Sunday morning. “Usually we do really good on weekends, but today it’s been super slow.”

…

Source: Retrieved September 5, 2016 from: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/health-care/article94223717.html

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VIDEO – Wynwood baker’s newest creation — shrine to Zika – http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article93717707.html

After all of the news of Zika cases in the neighborhood near his Wynood business slowed down his walk-in business, Zak the Baker, decided to make a new creation — a shrine to Zika. The light-hearted shrine was made to make people smile and not take things – Emily Michot emichot@miamihereald.com

The foregoing news article and VIDEO-AUDIO productions provide an inside glimpse into the medical research discipline. Obviously, the motivation of the medical research is to protect the economic engines of the Florida economy. The State was at the “precipice and only then, has the needed empowerment” emerged.

The Go Lean roadmap posits that more R&D is needed in the Caribbean too. We need the community ethos to prioritize and encourage careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics/medicine (STEM). We have a Zika problem in the Caribbean region too. We need innovations too. We need R&D at our educational institutions and SGE campuses.

This is an issue of economics, security and governance…

… and this is a familiar drama:

• Ebola – While not an American problem, when American citizens become afflicted in 2014, the US response was inspiringly genius, deploying a potential cure within a week.
• SARS – During the “heyday” of the SARS crisis, travel and transport to Hong Kong virtually came to a grinding halt! Hong Kong had previously enjoyed up to 14 million visitors annually; they were a gateway to the world. The SARS epidemic became a pandemic because of this status. Within weeks of the outbreak, SARS had spread from Hong Kong to infect individuals in 37 countries in early 2003.s

The CU has the prime directive of optimizing the economic, security and governing engines of the Caribbean region. The foregoing article and VIDEO-AUDIO productions depict that research is very important to new medical innovations and break-throughs. This is the manifestation and benefits of Research & Development (R&D). The book describes this focus as a community ethos and promotes R&D as valuable for the region. The following list details additional ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to optimize the region’s health deliveries and R&D investments:

The Go Lean roadmap does not purport to be an authority on medical research best practices. This economic-security-governance empowerment plan should not direct the course of direction for epidemiology or pharmacological research and/or treatment. But this war against Zika has dire consequences for tourism-based economies – this descriptor fits most of the Caribbean. So we must pay more than the usual attention to the issue. And we must incentivize those with the passion … and genius to make an impact in this area.

The champions for this issue in the Caribbean might come down to the contributions of just a few people, or maybe just one. This is the reality of genius qualifiers. Not everyone can do it. So those who cannot, need to step aside and not abate those that can. Epidemiology or pharmacological research & development is no time for egalitarianism.

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, the people and governing institutions, to lean-in for the empowerments in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. This is a Big Idea for the region, one where SGE’s, R&D and geniuses can soar. We can make the Caribbean a better place to live, work, heal and play. 🙂

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!