Speaker

Richard Kaszynski

Research Interest :

1. Dr. Kaszynski is now the Chief Medical Officer for AiPharma Lab. As an emergency care physician, Dr. Kaszynski’s clinical duties encompass both ground and aerial operations. In the ER he and his team represent the tip of the spear in casualty/emergency care and as an active member of the Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) he is responsible for providing rapid response critical care to patients in remote areas presenting with life-threatening conditions. As a Senior Medical Advisor to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Dr. Kaszynski has worked together with the Coordinator General of the Ebola response to identify and implement novel strategies to help combat/contain the Ebola outbreak. It was during the 2019 Ebola outbreak in the North Kivu and Ituri provinces in the Democratic Republic of the Congo where Dr. Kaszynski, together with the DRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Coordinator General for the Ebola outbreak agreed upon proposals for operational deployment of favipiravir in a post-exposure prophylactic capacity. While on investigational deployment to the frontline base of operations in Northern Kivu in January 2020, Dr. Kaszynski and Fujifilm Corporate Vice President, Mr. Koichi Yamada (Head of Fujifilm Pharmaceutical Division) learned that a pneumonia of unknown etiology which was rapidly emerging in China—later identified as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) which is caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2). Recognizing that SARS-CoV-2 relies on an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) which assumes a pivotal role in viral replication—and concomitantly the specific target identified by favipiravir for anti-viral therapy—the researchers quickly combined their expertise to formulate clinical trials in order to rapidly establish an efficacy profile against this novel virus. In response to the current COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Kaszynski has co-founded the “Global Unified platform for the Rapid Development and Investigation of therapeutics for Novel Pandemics (GUARDIAN)” program in collaboration with the Imperial College (London) to optimize clinical studies during outbreaks and pandemics. Dr. Kaszynski is one of the few physician-scientists with operational and academic experience involving the use of favipiravir and has been instrumental in establishing the following international COVID-19 clinical trials spanning five continents: • The “PIONEER” Trial: A Randomized Controlled Trial of Early Intervention in Patients Hospitalized with COVID-19: Favipiravir verses Hydroxycholorquine & azithromycin & zinc vErsEs Standard CaRe (United Kingdom and Belgium). • The Favipiravir Ambulatory Treatment Evaluation for Covid-19 (FATE) Trial in collaboration with South African Medical Research Council and Pretoria University (South Africa). • A Multi-center, Randomized, Double Blind, Placebo Controlled Clinical Trial Evaluating the Efficacy and Safety of Favipiravir in Mild Moderate to Severe COVID- 19 Patients (Kuwait). • A Phase 2 Randomized, Double Blinded, Placebo Controlled Study of Oral Favipiravir Compared to Standard Supportive Care in Subjects with Mild or Asymptomatic COVID-19 (USA). Dr. Kaszynski’s clinical experiences with favipiravir are not limited to the academic circuit – he has also exhaustively utilized the drug in the clinical setting. He and his team at the Emergency and Disaster Care Center at Tokyo Metropolitan Hospital have actively and successfully treated an extensive variety of COVID-19 patients using the broad-spectrum antiviral. In addition to numerous appearances on prominent media sources such as TIME Magazine and NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai; the Japan Broadcasting Corporation), Dr. Kaszynski has been invited to speak at various scientific venues across the globe to address up-to-date evidence and provide instructions on operational deployment of favipiravir in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.