Alphabet invests in the flu shot
Alphabet's investment fund relies only on a UK laboratory that is developing a universal flu vaccine.
The search for a universal flu vaccine acts as a grail within medical research labs.
Vaccitech, a UK private company, raised £ 20m (€ 22,5m) to develop this type of vaccine, including from GV, the venture capital fund of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, reported Reuters this Monday, January 15 2018.
GV is investing together with Sequoia Capital, a legendary Silicon Valley investor who funded Google, WhatsApp and 23andMe, among others.
This sum should allow Vaccitech, founded by Oxford researchers, to introduce new clinical trials for two years, with over 2.000 patients.
Every year the flu virus changes. To be effective, researchers need to develop a different vaccine, which corresponds to the last mutation. For example, a study published in November 2017 in the Proceedings of the American Academy of Sciences (PNAS) showed that the 2016 flu vaccine would protect only "20% to 30%" of people, due to mutations in the H3N2 strain.
This summer, Frenchman Sanofi paid $ 650 million to acquire the American biotech company, Protein Sciences, a flu vaccine specialist. Last October, Sanofi also collaborated with US biotech specialist Berg in the field of artificial intelligence to produce flu vaccines that would work on different strains of the virus. Tom Evans, the head of Vaccitech, hopes the vaccine will be ready "between 2023 and 2025," he confirmed to Reuters.
WE REPEAT FOR THE LESS ATTENTIVE
Alphabet is the holding company that controls Google, Alphabet is Google. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the two founders of the Google search engine, are the supreme "bosses" of Alphabet.
In June 2017, apparently negligible, the biggest shareholders of Alphabet went to the knife with the management for the absence of transparency on Alphabet's record-breaking lobbying expenses.
GOOGLE = ALPHABET
ALPHABET> APPLE (over $ 1000 per share)
ALPHABET invests in vaccines
BUT VACCINES DO NOT BRING EARNINGS !!!