UTMB – Kent Tseng

Open Philanthropy awarded a grant of $200,000 to Professor Kent Tseng of the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) to support a test of the utility of a locked nucleic acid (LNA) developed by Professor Jeffrey Glenn, Stanford University and collaborators as an antiviral drug for influenza A virus.  Dr Tseng has access to BSL3-enhanced and BSL4 laboratories so that he can test the drug against the highly pathogenic pandemic H5N1 Influenza virus in several animal species. The R&D done by the Glenn group predicts that the LNA will inhibit the growth of all influenza A viruses, including H5N1 strains.