FIP Treatment

Hi everyone! I'm an "old" member of PT and wanted to post about my experience with FIP treatment. Most cat owners are aware of the terrible thing called FIP - which is basically a death sentence. I lost one cat to it last year and recently found out that my little boy, Castiel, had FIP. I was devastated. Luckily, the lady I got Cas from had connections to the FIP Warriors who have access to a treatment of this thing. Castiel is such a sweet cat and I didn't want to lose another, so right then and there in the emergency vet hospital room, I decided that we would fight this and beat it!

I contacted FIP Warriors that same day and within 24 hours, I had GS in my hand. It's been amazing to see how Cas has reacted to the treatment. From being lethargic, skin and bone with belly bloat (he has the wet FIP form) to him now running around and playing with his brother is truly amazing.

I created an instagram for him to track his journey if anyone is interested. If you have questions about FIP, please ask! This truly has been a life saver!

https://www.instagram.com/castielthewarriorcat/

How fabulous! Thanks for sharing this!

That's wonderful! I'm so glad it's worked so well for Castiel and you!

Just what exactly is GS, and how does the treatment go?

Thanks,
Pat

GS (GS441524) - a history (for anyone who is interested...HA!)

Gilead science made a whole bunch of chemicals as potential antivirals for HIV years ago, but most of them did not work all that well. A whole class of them was designed to inhibit reverse transcriptase for HIV. Reverse transcriptase is a viral enzyme. It makes DNA off the incoming virus's RNA, and then with the help of another protein, inserts that in the host cell genome and that’s how retroviruses work. Anyhow, at some point, Dr. Pederson at UC Davis decided to try antivirals for FIP. They had been working on all kinds of things beforehand because FIP is an inflammatory disease, it involves incorrect response of the immune system and that’s what kills the cat; but all the immune system related drugs didn’t cure it. It so happened that the CEO of Gilead science at that time was a cat lover who knew Dr. Pederson.

The CEO offered their unused drugs that they had manufactured to Dr. P to try on FIP and one of them worked like gangbusters and it was GS441524 - which is what I am using today. (GS for Gilead science)

While Dr. Pederson was doing studies with this (and there’s two published studies on it) the Ebola outbreak happened in Africa and Gilead thought maybe some of these drugs would work against Ebola. Gilead was concerned that the GS441524 would not get into human cells effectively, so they did an additional modification of the drug and it worked a little bit on Ebola - so they started out on the FDA approval for that version of the drug, which is called Remdesivir.

They got the (original GS) drug partway through the FDA approval process, but it really didn’t work that well on Ebola so nobody was really picking it up; however it worked like gangbusters on FIP and the underlying virus that causes it. Since FIP is a coronavirus, they immediately started checking it on Covid when that surfaced and it worked ok. Not super well, but well enough that they continue working on the FDA approval and the patenting of the drug for COVID, so they got worried that GS441524, if used in veterinary purposes, might interfere with the patent an FDA approval for Remdesivir.

So they canceled all work on GS441524 for veterinary purposes, made it unavailable, and since they hold a patent on it... not merely can’t it be used for research purposes anymore, but it also can’t be patented or sold as a veterinary drug. :(

There is just way more money in a human antiviral that there is for a cat antiviral :(

So that is why all these cat treatments are pretty much black market - there is a special group of people I'm in contact with who can access the drug. If you want to follow Castiel's progress, I have an instagram account created to follow his 84 day treatment (which consists of painful injections for 84 days).

I'm oddly intrigued by this and even moreso seeing him go from being on death's door to being his silly/pesky self!

https://www.instagram.com/castielthewarriorcat/

I hope Castiel the warrior cat is doing very well! :love:

Thanks for checking in! He’s progressing well! We completed day 73/84 today!
Here’s his Instagram in case anyone wants to follow along:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CUvk9FurXog/?utm_medium=copy_link

A candle for Castiel... https://gratefulness.org/candle/sing...hterm=pet+talk

I added one (which turned out to be two!)..

:love::love::love::love::love::love::love::love: