As you may be aware, today has been designated as Giving Tuesday. Though I don't much relish begging or soliciting donations, it needs to be done.
Please note that project GRFT has non-profit status through Counter Culture Labs.
We depend on your donations as well as the long hours of hard work put in by a small group of volunteers to keep moving forward.
Our goal is to produce, store and make available transgenic rice containing Griffithsin (GRFT) worldwide for research purposes. By producing the rice locally, it solves certain supply chain problems that we are seeing a lot of now. It empowers people living without much resources to obtain this valuable material by simply farming rice. The GRFT can be purified from the rice quickly and simply using chromatography methods not too different from making drip coffee.
I'm sure that everyone who reads this wants there to be an end to the global pandemic we have been experiencing. That takes a global solution.
We are fortunate in the US to have access to advanced vaccines. Yet in many developing countries, the vaccination rate is very small, around 2% in some areas. GRFT is not meant to substitute for vaccination and we would encourage everyone that hasn't yet got vaccinated with access to vaccines to roll up your sleeves and get vaxxed!
GRFT has not so far been approved as a pharmaceutical. It needs to go through clinical trials.
Research has shown GRFT to be a most potent antiviral, inhibiting cellular infection by coronaviruses as well as other viruses.
What we are doing in our project is developing the biomanufacturing of this non-toxic antiviral polypeptide by expressing it in rice. This can be done in any location where climate permits, or in greenhouses. There's no need for expensive industrial laboratories with bioreactors with this method. We can keep the cost to a minimum supporting the 21st century wisdom that states: medicine for people who need it rather than for profits.
Right now we have lab expenses such buying gold nanoparticles to be coated with DNA and shot into rice calluses to enter the cells and transform the rice to express GRFT.
If you, dear reader, are in agreement with this and our efforts towards ending pandemics, present and future, please help, here's a link to contribute:
https://www.counterculturelabs.org/
Please put into the special instructions box:
GRFT
Let's work together to put stop viral outbreaks from becoming pandemics!
Thanks!
