CSIR is conducting clinical trials for favipiravir, remdesivir and an anti-inflammatory drug called colchicine, which is commonly used to treat gout, said Vishwakarma.
New Delhi, May 23 (PTI) With a vaccine still a long way away, attempts to reuse old drugs used for other diseases, expect an early counter to COVID-19 Provide, scientists say, potential antagonists by placing antiviral remavivir at the top of the list. As COVID-19 continues its spread – surpassing 5.2 million cases and 3,38,000 fatalities on Saturday – several categories of drugs accompany clinical trials. Among them, Remedisvir, which initially went to trial five years ago for treatment of the deadly Ebola virus, has promised moderately rapid recovery from COVID-19, experts said. More than 130 drugs are being used to treat COVID-19, some may have the ability to stop the virus, while others, according to a tracker maintained by the Military Institute, calm immune responses that damage organs “Right now, there is only one effective method used to reconstruct drugs already approved for other diseases,” says Ram Vishwakarma, director of the Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine at an independent economic think tank. Can be used if they can be used for COVID-19. ” , CSIR, Jammu, told PTI. Remedswear is helping people recover faster, and reducing mortality in critically ill patients, Vishwakarma said, adding that it can be life-saving. We do not have time to develop new medicines. Vishwakarma said that it takes five-10 years to develop a new drug, so we are using existing drugs and clinical trials are being carried out to find out if any of them are effective. is. They reported that some of the molecules available to treat diseases such as HIV or other viral infections can be quickly screened against novel coronaviruses. If found effective, they can be used against COVID-19 with appropriate approval from drug control bodies. When the pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences sought to begin a clinical trial for remedesavir for the treatment of novel coronoviruses, it immediately received approval from the US FDA. According to Vishwakarma, another drug showing promise is favipirvir, a broad-spectrum antiviral approved in Japan, which is also under clinical trials for its effectiveness against COVID-19. India is also playing its role.
The Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT), Hyderabad has developed the technology to announce this month, Shaker Manda, director general of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).
CSIR is conducting clinical trials for fevipirvir, Remedisvir and an anti-inflammatory drug commonly used to treat gout, Vishwakarma said.
“Many drug trials are happening in India, which we are doing with pharmaceutical companies,” said Vishwakarma.
Of the drugs under test, Remedisvir has shown the most promising results, Subrata Sen, Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Shiv Nadar University in Uttar Pradesh. Sen, whose lab is involved in the discovery of biologically active molecules, told PTI that some of the drugs being tested are antivirals, and some are anti-malarial and antibiotics. Among the antivirals on the tracker list, some are new molecules under test, while others are older drugs that are being reconstituted and tested for their effectiveness against COVID-19. Remedisvir, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in April, mimics the genetic material of coronovirus, when the virus copies its RNA or genetic material, the drug replaces some of the building blocks of the pathogens. . According to the authors of this study, the drug prevents the production of new virus copies. Preliminary results showed that patients who received Remedisvir had a 31 percent faster time to recovery than those who received placebo. However, another study published in the journal Lancet in April warned that the interpretation of these findings was limited because the decline in cases in China led to a halt to the Remedisvir study early after scientists were unable to recruit enough patients I went. The authors of the Lancet study concluded that more evidence from ongoing clinical trials is needed to better understand whether Remedisavir can provide meaningful clinical benefit. Other drugs are also being tested. Vishwakarma said that some drugs have been developed to treat HIV, such as lopinavir and ratanavir are also tested to cure COVID-19. A study published in Lancet this month stated that the drugs involved in the combination of interferon beta-1b, as well as the antiviral combination lopinavir-ritonavir and ribavirin, in reducing the viral or volume of the virus compared to lopinavir-ratonavir alone its better. But these, too, were the initial findings, seen only in patients with mild to moderate disease, so the scientists behind the study emphasized the need for larger trials to examine the effectiveness of this triple combination in critically ill patients.
Another study, published last month in the journal Science, noted the effectiveness of two small molecule drug candidates, named 11a and 11b, that can block the SARS-COV-2M protease enzyme, using copies of the virus itself Does to make. Molecules can prevent the virus from replicating in monkey cells, and have been found to be safe for administration in mice and bighas, with the study’s conclusion that both drugs warrant further study. Scientists have also tested the effectiveness of treatments associated with the use of antibodies that can bind parts of the virus, and block their entry into host cells. In a study published last month in the journal Cell, scientists reported that antibodies derived from the immune system of a South American mammal named Lailas could block the entry of host coronaviruses into host cells. This study found that lamas, which belong to mammals similar to camels, produce special types of antibody molecules that tightly bind an important protein on novel coronaviruses. However, scientists believe that its efficacy remains to be proved in human clinical trials. Last week, scientists at the Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Genomics at Peking University revealed a new method to identify multiple antibodies from recovered COVID-19 patients. Using the single-cell genomics method, researchers can rapidly identify antibodies from plasma plasma, a component of patients’ blood. When researchers tested these antibodies in mice, they found that some of them could neutralize the virus. Another team at the University of Washington in the US recently found that a combination of antibodies, among patients who had recovered from the 2002–03 SARS pandemic virus infection, could effectively block novel coronaviruses. One of these molecules, named S309, showed particularly strong neutralizing activity against SARS-CoV-2, stating that it may act in combination with another, less potent antibody that targets a different site on the virus. Does. However, these results also remain to be validated in human clinical trials. Among other treatments currently under trial or in use, Sen said US President Donald Trump’s “game changer” drug hydroxycoloroquine was promised
