If the Home Alone movies taught me anything (and that’s doubtful to begin with) it’s that defeating the bad guys goes hand in hand with well-laid traps. Well, there are few bad guys as agile, as devious, and as skilled as viruses. Now, Georgia based biotech firm Zirus has found a new way to fight viral infections: don’t target the virus, target the human host cell. Get ‘em where they hope to live. Whereas typical viral medications aim to attack a viral particle (virion) directly, Zirus is helping create medications that will make your cells inhospitable to viral infection. It’s a revolutionary new idea and I got to pick the brain of Zirus CEO David Perryman to learn more.

Zirus isn’t making medicine directly, they’re researching the way viruses exploit cells. But what kind of medications might Zirus’ research make possible? Well, treatments for the common cold for starters. Herpes, SARS, Hepatitis C, those could all be medicated. How about a single drug that could help you fight off Ebola, HIV, or the Flu. Yep, Zirus technology could be used to target not just one virus, but a whole family of viruses.

When you can target entire families of viruses, you can prepare for diseases that haven’t even developed yet. Vaccines and standard anti-viral meds can’t do that. As Perryman says, “There’s no way you can vaccinate against the unknown.” In this way, Zirus based meds are superior to vaccines. So now we may have a pro-active response to the threats of bio-terrorism. And in-vitro experiments show that the techniques developed by Zirus can prevent viral caused cell destruction with every virus tested to date. That’s right, these medications could be nearly universal in their application.

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