{"id":222952,"date":"2020-06-15T15:23:32","date_gmt":"2020-06-15T19:23:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=222952"},"modified":"2020-06-15T15:26:28","modified_gmt":"2020-06-15T19:26:28","slug":"why-has-cuban-biotechnology-been-successful-against-covid-19-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/cuba\/science-cuba\/why-has-cuban-biotechnology-been-successful-against-covid-19-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Why has Cuban biotechnology been successful against COVID-19? (I)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Help us keep OnCuba alive here<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Although Cuba has not completely defeated COVID-19<\/a>, as evidenced by the outbreaks and positive cases detected in recent days, the island has undoubtedly successfully managed to cope with a disease that has become a pandemic, which has already spread to some 8 million people and killed more than 430,000 worldwide.<\/p>\n

The island\u2019s figures<\/a>, although they have maintained a progression since the first cases were reported on March 11, have not suffered an exponential jump, as has happened in many nations, and have managed to remain within a favorable scenario. This has prevented hospitals from overloading, victims from multiplying\u2014to date, just over 2,260 infected have been confirmed and 84 patients have died\u2014and for the country to carry on its shoulders the weight that an uncontrolled epidemic would represent for its already hit economy.<\/p>\n

The key to this achievement, the Cuban authorities assure, has been the implementation of a comprehensive strategy that combines active epidemiological surveillance, isolation measures for the population\u2014although without decreeing quarantine, except where there have been localized transmission events\u2014, the compulsory hospitalization of positive cases, contacts and suspects\u2014even asymptomatic\u2014, and medical attention that has not spared all the resources at its disposal for the treatment of the sick. And within these resources, Cuban biotech products have been undisputed protagonists.<\/p>\n

Cuban protocol to confront COVID-19<\/strong><\/p>\n

As part of the protocol established by the Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) to combat the disease, several drugs produced in Cuba have attracted headlines. Their effectiveness in preventing progression toward the most severe stages and in reducing the fatality of COVID-19, has benefited numerous patients treated on the island and has generated interest beyond its borders. This, however, was not been by chance. Nor is it an exclusive result of the intense work of Cuban scientists in the last two months. Its reason must be traced back much earlier; it must be sought in the integration of the island\u2019s renowned biotechnology industry.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/youtu.be\/Ib5DsLz2P_g<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we have done during the pandemic is the consequence of many years of work,\u201d Eulogio Pimentel, general director of Havana\u2019s Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB), explained to OnCuba<\/strong>. \u201cIt is the result of a macro design, not of a scientist or of a single entity, but of how to build an industry that was supposedly closed to countries like Cuba, which, precisely because of the cost of researching and maintaining the standards required in the production systems of the biotech industry, are excluded from it. However, in Cuba a whole process was masterfully designed since the 1980s, which includes an important group of scientific institutions and that has allowed us to get to where we are today.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are institutions that in some cases even work in common diseases, but using different strategies from the scientific dimension and from the productive technological dimension. And although we don\u2019t compete with each other, because a poor country like ours doesn\u2019t have the resources for several centers to be working on the same thing, we do complement each other a great deal, and an example of this complementation has been precisely this pandemic. In the fight against COVID-19, the Center for Molecular Immunology, the National Center for Biopreparations, the Center for Immunoassay, the National Center for Scientific Research, the CIGB itself, we have tensed our muscles and the research and manufacturing activity has become tense to the fullest. And to the same extent we feel, not pleased, but comforted that the effort of the institutions of the Cuban pharmaceutical and biotechnological industry, together with that of our health system, that of the doctors, specialists, nurses, who are the direct protagonists in this struggle, has made it possible for Cuba to show today a practically controlled pandemic, which has even superimposed the most optimistic models that were had of how the coronavirus would evolve here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Interferon\u2019s path<\/strong><\/p>\n

Days ago, Cuba commemorated the 39th anniversary of the first production of human interferon not obtained by genetic engineering, achieved by six professors from the island who were in Helsinki, Finland, learning the technology to obtain it from human blood. Those years would mark the beginning of a path that has consolidated the prestige of Cuban biotechnology at a global level and that has one of its emblematic products in interferon; a banner that, decades later, has again proven its worth in the unexpected scene of the pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cInterferon has traveled throughout the history of Cuban biotechnology, from being the founding pillar in terms of being the first genetically engineered molecule that had a clinical impact, to becoming today a medicine of cardinal therapeutic importance in achieving the clearance of the viral load in patients suffering from COVID-19,\u201d says Pimentel, who recalls that thanks to a joint venture between Cuba and China, this drug had its first test against SARS-CoV-2 in that Asian country, the origin of the pandemic. The success achieved there, he affirms, \u201cgave us great satisfaction and also helped us to have more confidence in the use of recombinant interferon alpha 2b against this disease.\u201d<\/p>\n

The famous Cuban interferon vs the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n