repost, with full text added
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UNC researchers helped develop a drug to treat COVID-19. Now, it’ll be tested on humans.
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article241804921.html
this anon doesn't trust their solution. same old DS names involved.
>>8694850 pb
full text:
A new antiviral drug will be tested in human clinical trials that could help doctors treat COVID-19 and it can be taken as a pill.
UNC-Chapel Hill researchers and a team of other scientists found that the new drug, called EIDD-2801, can prevent and reduce severe lung damage in testing that involved mice infected with coronavirus, according to a new study published Monday. The human clinical trials for the drug are expected to start this spring.
“This new drug not only has high potential for treating COVID-19 patients, but also appears effective for the treatment of other serious coronavirus infections,” senior author Ralph Baric said in a news release.
Baric is William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of epidemiology at UNC-Chapel Hill. He’s running a lab at UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health that’s working on fighting the global pandemic and finding a cure for the coronavirus disease. More than 1 million people have been infected with COVID-19 and more than 70,000 people have died from it.
“Currently, no antiviral drugs have been approved to treat SARS-CoV-2 or any of the other coronaviruses that cause human disease,” according to UNC. But Baric and this team are working to change that.
Ralph Beric, a faculty member at UNC-Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health, is a leading researcher on coronaviruses. UNC-CHAPEL HILL
The new drug is a form of the antiviral compound EIDD-1931 that can be taken orally, which is easier than using an IV and helps it absorb and travel to the lungs.
The pill option could also be beneficial for treating patients who aren’t severely ill or as a preventative measure for people who have been exposed to the coronavirus but are not sick yet, according to UNC. That could be particularly helpful at nursing homes that have a high concentration of high-risk populations.
In the mice testing, the drug was given as a treatment 12 or 24 hours after the infection began, which reduced the degree of lung damage and weight loss in mice, according to UNC. That treatment window should be longer in humans because the time between getting the coronavirus disease and dying from it are generally longer for people than mice.
In addition to limiting the spread of COVID-19, the drug could curb future outbreaks of other coronaviruses if the human clinical trials are successful.
“With three novel human coronaviruses emerging in the past 20 years, it is likely that we will continue to see more,” first author Timothy Sheahan said in a statement. “EIDD-2801 holds promise to not only treat COVID-19 patients today, but to treat new coronaviruses that may emerge in the future.”
Sheahan is an assistant professor of epidemiology at UNC who is working in Baric’s lab.
The results of the study were published by the journal Science Translational Medicine on Monday. The paper includes data from cultured human lung cells infected with the coronavirus disease and mice infected with the related coronaviruses SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, according to UNC.
UNC virologists in Baric’s lab are working with scientists in the lab of Mark Denison, Edward Claiborne Stahlman Professor of pediatrics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and George Painter, chief executive officer of the nonprofit Drug Innovation Ventures at Emory.
Painter is also the director of the Emory Institute for Drug Development, where this drug was discovered. The collaboration is supported by an National Institutes of Health grant through the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
“We are amazed at the ability of EIDD-1931 and -2801 to inhibit all tested coronaviruses and the potential for oral treatment of COVID-19,” Andrea Pruijssers, the lead antiviral scientist in the Denison Lab at VUMC, said in a statement. “This work shows the importance of ongoing National Institutes of Health (NIH) support for collaborative research to develop antivirals for all pandemic viruses, not just coronaviruses.”
This team also helped develop another antiviral drug currently in clinical trials of patients with COVID-19 called remdesivir. The two drugs could be combined for a more successful treatment and to prevent resistance from the virus, according to Painter.