Relief Therapeutics Holding AG (RLFTF)

[changes_iv]

My late uncle's research is being used to help treat COVID patients

Family pride meets university research, patent licensing and a meaningful trademark.

My uncle, Dr. Sami I. Said, MD, was a researcher and distinguished professor. He finished his career at Stony Brook University in New York after serving as Chief of Pulmonary and Critical Care. After training as a medical doctor in Egypt, he spent time at Johns Hopkins University, the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, and worked in Oklahoma and many Veterans Administration hospitals in the United States.

Research & Memories

In 1970, he discovered Vasoactive Intestinal Peptide (VIP). He continued his research on VIP and its applications for the rest of his career, collaborating with others around the world.

I remember many American Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations with Uncle Sami, since he traveled from the US to spend both of those holidays with us in Ottawa almost every year. Like in the photo at the top of this article, Uncle Sami would recline and tune in to important NFL games, while multitasking and reviewing scientific papers, preparing grant applications, or reading the New York Times.

A fond memory was when our family joined him at the American Thoracic Society (ATS) conference in Toronto in 2000, where he was named the "Amberson Lecturer" for his major contributions to pulmonary physiology and pharmacology.

He never retired, just like his father (my grandfather, a Coptic Evangelical Christian minister). He was an inventor and had 8 US patents (which I found cool, as a patent agent), and was still working on a potential new patent shortly before he passed away.

VIP in COVID treatment

Now his patented research in VIP is being licensed and used for treating COVID patients. I'm so proud. (While there has been a lot of focus on vaccines, treatments for people who have COVID are also very important.)

Last month, US-based NeuroRx announced some promising results from the Phase 2b/3 trial of ZYESAMI™ (aviptadil, previously RLF-100™) for the treatment of Respiratory Failure in critically ill patients with Covid-19. According to the press release, at 28 days, patients treated with ZYESAMI™ "demonstrate 35% higher likelihood of recovery from respiratory failure with continued survival...In tertiary care hospitals, ZYESAMI-treated patients were 46% more likely to recover and return home before day 28".

Also from the press release (emphasis added):

"COVID-19-related respiratory failure is caused by selective infection of the ATII cell by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. VIP is shown to block Coronavirus replication in the ATII cell, block cytokine synthesis, block viral-induced cell death (cytopathy), and upregulate surfactant production. To our knowledge, other than ZYESAMI™, no currently proposed treatments for Covid-19 specifically target these vulnerable Type II cells. Recent laboratory findings suggest that VIP directly interferes with the spike protein complex of the SARS-CoV-2 virus."

A couple of interesting personal notes about the trademark:

The trademark includes my Uncle's name "SAMI";

If you pronounce "ZYESAMI" in Arabic (my Uncle's native tongue), it means "like Sami". This is so fitting for a treatment built on decades of collaborative research that is being used to care for patients suffering from COVID-19 in the current global pandemic.

In fact, in an earlier MedPage Today article, a former colleague of Uncle Sami's put it eloquently when speaking about this use of his research:

"I am cheering for Sami Said, because if somewhere out there, he knew his drug could block the progression of COVID, there wouldn't be a happier man in the world"


Conclusion

Uncle Sami was a doctor and an educator, a gentleman and a family man. He really would be so pleased to see this new life-saving use of his life-long research.

But he would also be humble about it, and emphasize everyone else's contributions. And that would be classic Uncle Sami, and would make me even more proud of him.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/my-late-uncles-research-being-used-help-treat-covid-patients-behmann

https://rumble.com/vio409-virus-origin-investigation-blocked-by-u.s.-elites-politicians-experts-media.html