Life-Saving Drugs Made From Corn Husks

by Kevin Burton

   We just bought a big box of corn from our favorite buy-local small farm. That makes us a candidate to help the young man from our first good-news story today.

   But as you will see, he’s doing OK!

   Hope you are having a good Saturday and have room for some more good news from the Good News Network. 

   We have gathered three stories today, written by reporter Andy Corbley. The first is about a young man putting corn husks to good use.

   “Self-described as merely ‘someone from a small village in a small European country’ young Adam Kovalčík won the top prize in America’s most prestigious science fair with his invention of a quicker, cheaper method of making a popular antiviral drug out of corn husks.” Corbley wrote.

   “His innovation, which reduced the cost per gram from $75.00 to just $12.00, and the production time per batch from 9 days to just 5, could dramatically increase the supply of galidesivir, used to treat RNA viruses ebola, Marburg, Zitka, and SARS CoV-2.

   “The 19-year-old from Dulovce, Slovakia, flew to Ohio to attend the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair, the world’s largest pre-college science and engineering competition, hosted by the Society for Science.

   Kovalčík won the $100,000 George D. Yancopoulos Innovator Award, the highest honor available, for his presentation on the production of galidesivir from corn waste, which the judges described as a “bullet proof” presentation.

   “I cannot describe this feeling,” Kovalčík told Business Insider. “I did not expect such a huge international competition to be won by someone from a small village in a small European country, so it was just pure shock.”

   “His innovation allows for production of galidesivir via ten steps rather than 15. The molecule at the heart of Kovalčík’s process is called furfuryl alcohol, distilled from corn husks.

   “One by one, a series of chemicals are added until the mixture obtains the composition of aza-saccheride, a sugar from which only three more changes are needed to get to galidesivir.”

  “He was able to shortcut this entire process,” Chris RoDee, a chemist and retired patent examiner who judged the competition, told Business Insider. “He basically halved the number of steps because he just went in through a different door.”

   Kovalčík has already filed a preliminary patent for his production process, plans to work with a research group at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava to improve the process, and has concocted an idea to use his prize money to start a company that manufactures eco-friendly perfumes from corn.

   Story number two, involves life-saving of a more immediate kind by a 12-year-old boy, who in the process of saving his family, impressed a local fire chief.

   “After a young Virginian saved his family from a house fire, the local fire chief admitted that if he ever needed a job in his hometown, it’s enough to come by the fire department,” Corbley wrote.

   “Romir Parker, a seventh grader from the city of Petersburg, near Richmond, was presented by the municipality with a special proclamation for demonstrating bravery and protective instincts of someone far older.”

   “It started one day last month when a fast-moving fire quickly took hold of Parker’s house while his younger siblings, aged 1 and 2, were asleep on the couch. Hearing a strange sound, Parker came down from the bedroom only to find a wall of black smoke,” Corbley wrote.

   “Those instincts kicked in, and he rushed to scoop up his brother and sister—one in each arm—before carrying them out of the house.

   But there was someone else: his grandmother.

   “Going back in, he helped walk his grandmother out shortly before the fire department arrived four minutes after they got the call.”

   “Petersburg Fire Chief Wayne Hoover didn’t mince words about Parker’s actions, even if his team arrived so quickly. The young man saved his family’s life.

   “The City of Petersburg presented him with a proclamation that recognized Parker for ‘demonstrating a level of bravery and presence of mind, well beyond his years,’ while Chief Hoover made the lad an honorary firefighter.

   “I go downstairs, it’s just black smoke all throughout the house,” Parker told the local CBS affiliate. “I grabbed my 2-year-old brother, then I grabbed the 1-year-old, cause the 1-year-old is smaller and I fitted them inside my arms and we ran outside the house.”

   “Hoover said that when Parker turns 18, he’s got a job with the fire brigade if he needs one.”

   From a life-saving young man, to a life-saving pre-teen, we go to a life-saver among man’s best friends.

   “At an adoption meet and greet event hosted by an animal rescue, a shelter dog performed an extraordinary act of diagnosis without ever being trained to do so”

   “Between 4 and 5 years of age from unknown breeding, Sienna broke away from the crowd of dogs, appreciative attendees, and familiar caretakers—walking right up to a man at a slight distance from center of the event.

   She sat down, looked at him in the eye, put her paw on his leg, and refused to leave his side.

   “She sat quietly at his feet, refused to budge, and softly placed her paw on his leg,” the shelter, called Friends of Campbell County Animal Control of Virginia, said in a Facebook post. “It wasn’t a trick. It wasn’t prompted. It was pure intuition.”

   She then started pawing at his leg. Despite never receiving training on how to detect medical emergencies, Sienna knew something was wrong.

   That intuition proved correct.

   “Moments later, the shelter wrote, the man’s wife approached and gasped. “My husband is either having a seizure or is about to have one!”

   Via Facebook, the man’s wife Kristen Davis explained that he had suffered from several myoclonic seizures that morning. But after returning home for a rest, seemed to have recovered.

   Venturing out later that day was too much it seemed, and the seizures returned just as Sienna had predicted, something the rescue described as part of the “magic” and “unspoken wisdom” that shelter dogs carry with them.

   While many in the comments section felt it was destiny that Davis and her husband adopt Sienna, they already have three dogs, and can spare neither room nor resources for a fourth pup.

   However, the Friends of Campbell County Animal Control have since shared that readers have covered the cost of a necessary surgery and adoption fees for Sienna—she remains available for a forever home free of any charges.

   “She has the innate ability to alert to a stranger’s medical needs—with no special training and just her love for humans as her motivation,” they wrote on Facebook. “Please help us find her the home she deserves! A family out there needs her as much as she needs you.”