It is astounding that Hepatitis C is the only viral disease that can be cured with medication!
We have antibiotics primarily from fungi derived substances, but there are no other class of substances we’ve been able to appropriate for our own use to treat viruses.
I find it amazing that viruses, which are supposedly “simpler” aren’t more vulnerable.
But thinking about it, prions are even simpler and have no know treatments.
This demonstrates, then, that complex systems can be quite fragile.
> I find it amazing that viruses, which are supposedly “simpler” aren’t more vulnerable.
That's WHY they're less vulnerable. Less complexity reduces the attack surface. With microbes, there are lots of ways to disrupt their biological processes, but viruses have fewer attack vectors, making it difficult to target them.
Sofosbuvir, the Hepatitus C cure, was developed by Pharmasset before it was acquired by Gilead for $11.2 billion. Gilead paid for the later stage clinical trials but by then it had already been tested in humans and it was obvious to pretty much everyone that Sofosbuvir was something of a miracle drug. The time from discovery to marketing approval was only six years which is an almost unheard of pace.
Gilead spent $11 billion, some of which went to compensating Pharmassset investors who put up a lot of money to make it happen. And crashing in Phase 3 is not unknown: Pfizer has lost how much on Alzheimers? Plus toxicity and rare side effects can doom drugs.
What do you mean by "cure"? And in what sense is sofosbuvir (assuming that is what you mean) a cure for hepatitis C, but acyclovir is not a cure for varicella zoster?
Acyclovir definitely seemed to help when i had chickenpox!
It treats the symptoms but the virus is still active:
"It can treat herpes virus infections, including shingles and genital herpes. It can also treat chickenpox. This medication does not cure herpes, but may prevent herpes sores or blisters."
Yes, but that was done by vaccinating everyone and thus breaking the cycle of transmission. Smallpox has no animal hosts (lots of mammalian species have their own version instead), so after no humans were able to get it, the disease died out. If you got it today somehow, they'd pump you full of antiviral drugs and hope for the best, but they wouldn't be able to actually end the infection, as the word "cure" would suggest.
We have antibiotics primarily from fungi derived substances, but there are no other class of substances we’ve been able to appropriate for our own use to treat viruses.
I find it amazing that viruses, which are supposedly “simpler” aren’t more vulnerable.
But thinking about it, prions are even simpler and have no know treatments.
This demonstrates, then, that complex systems can be quite fragile.