Frequently asked
questions

Kimer Med is a New Zealand biotech company. Our vision is to end the suffering caused by viral disease. To do this, we’re working on a family of broad-spectrum antiviral drugs.

Broad-spectrum antivirals are drugs (medicines) that can inhibit or treat infections caused by multiple viruses, often spanning different viral families or types.

Unlike traditional antivirals, which are usually designed to target a single specific virus, broad-spectrum antivirals work by interfering with mechanisms or pathways that are common to many viruses.

The main difference between antivirals and vaccines is that vaccines are given before exposure to a disease, to try and prevent an infection, while antivirals are medicines used to treat infection after a person is already sick.

Although there are lots of different types of viruses, most of them share something in common - they enter cells and hijack them to create more copies of the virus, eventually bursting out and killing the cell. During this process, called ‘lytic replication’, they produce long strands of dsRNA.

Our antivirals are based on a technology that selectively targets viral dsRNA inside the cell, binds to it, and triggers a process called apoptosis. Apoptosis is a natural process sometimes referred to as “programmed cell death”. It is an orderly and controlled sequence of biochemical events that rids your body of unwanted, infected or damaged cells.

Our lead candidate is currently an antiviral that works against all four types of Dengue, and Zika virus (another flavivirus).

Our goal is to produce a family of broad-spectrum antivirals that would provide protection against a wide range of currently untreatable viral diseases.

No, not yet. We are still in pre-clinical development.

Most conventional antivirals work by targeting specific steps in the virus life cycle to stop the virus from multiplying inside your body. They do not usually kill the virus directly, but instead block its ability to replicate.

One drawback of this approach is the possible development of drug resistance, as viruses can evolve mutations that mean the drugs no longer inhibit replication effectively.

Instead of designing drugs to bind to specific viral proteins, Kimer Med’s platform targets a process all viruses (with one possible exception) have in common: the production of long strands of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA).

This approach gives us a truly ‘broad-spectrum’ target, and reduces the likelihood of resistance developing, since the targeted process (lytic replication) is essential to viral survival.

We carry out our antiviral research in a fully-equipped and certified PC-2 laboratory in Nelson, New Zealand. Most of our work involves fabricating and testing antiviral proteins, culturing cells and quality control testing. Our fabrication process does not involve using viruses in any way.

All of the testing against different viruses has been carried out by third-party laboratories overseas, mostly in the USA.

There is some information for investors here, and you are welcome to contact us with any questions, or to register your interest in our Series B raise.

Anyone interested in partnering, or collaborating with us is also welcome to make contact here.

There’s a lot of information provided on this website, including in our ‘Articles’ section.

You’re welcome to contact us by email if you have any other questions.