Laurence Corash hoped that a plant extract used to make a veterinary vaccine could help prevent HIV infection in his hemophilia patients.CERUS CORPORATION
Laurence Corash, a hematologist at the University of California, San Francisco, started hearing reports in the early 1980s that demand for the antibiotic pentamidine was skyrocketing. The drug was used to treat pneumocystosis, a severe pneumonia caused by a yeast-like fungus that typically gained a foothold by exploiting the weakened immune systems of very old or severely malnourished people.
Some of Corash’s hemophilia patients, who were otherwise healthy, started contracting the fungal disease and taking pentamidine to combat the infection. Searching for a cause for this trend, Corash realized that his patients had one thing in common: they were getting injections of a concentrated blood extract called factor VIII to help their blood clot. It dawned upon the physician that something in the factor VIII ...
