Dear Vice Presidents and TF Members,

Thank you for joining the telecom meeting on April 27.

The meeting began with an announcement of BigC (Bio Incheon Global Conference), which will be held on August 25th , 2020 in Songdo Convensia, Incheon, Korea. AFOB Korean RBO will organize it in the form of on-line conference and also partially off-line conference. The topic will be COVID-19, and AFOB COVID-19 TF members should be the main speakers and participants of BigC. We may have the Executive board meeting at BigC.

There was a common opinion shared among the participants in this telemeeting.It was that Asia should lead developing curing medicines and vaccines as it showed some successful precedents in coping with COVID-19 during this first pandemic spreading. In addition, there have been already a lot of researches going on the Corona virus caused bythe prior outbreak of SARS and MERS in Asia. It is time to lead sharing the knowledges and resources of Asian regions in search for the cures against this Corona virus and any others to come in the future.

The AFOB TF is working like a think tank. TF members are invited as speakers in BigC to share the information and scientific and technological advances they have collected on the COVID-19, their comments, and their experiences and results if they have participated in the research.

For more effective discussion and exchange of information, this TF will be divided into three groups:

Each TF member can choose the group they want to join and initiate a group discussion.

We are encouraging the research collaboration among AFOB colleagues on projects that require long-term effort. In this meeting Prof. Hoang Duc Nguyen (Vietnam) proposed the use of domain S1 expressed in Bacillus subtilis as vaccine vector and Prof. Suh-Chin Wu (Taiwan) proposed the use of mucosal adjuvants for mucosal vaccine development. Interested colleagues can contact them to establish a cooperative relationship. Also, Dr. Yeong Ok Baik, CEO of Eubiologics Co., which has platforms of using rCRM197 as the carrier protein and using EcML as the adjuvant, is willing to cooperate with AFOB colleagues.

Antivirual drugs are of interest, especially compounds from nature. For example, according to Prof. Dey, Tinosporacordifolia in India has been used as anti-viral herbal products in Ayurveda. Prof. Joseph Auresenia mentioned an on-going clinical tests for virgin coconut oil (VCO) product as potential cure for COVID-19 in Philippine General Hospital. The propolis extract will be clinically studies as immunostimulating agent in Indonesia. For the COVID-19, most participants of this meeting considered herbal research to be very important. This is one of the most likely collaborative research targets for AFOB colleagues. We hope that through close communication between TF members, a research cooperative team can be formed very soon.

In addition, it was proposed that Professor George Gao should give a webinar to AFOB members.

Best regards,

Wen-Chien Lee, President of AFOB
Tai Hyun Park, Secretary General of AFOB