Antiviral drug Molnupiravir showing promise in trials against coronavirus

 

Antiviral drug Molnupiravir showing promise in trials against coronavirus

Molnupiravir is currently in clinical trials and could be a promising tool against coronavirus.

Pune,

— Over the last year, several drugs have either been developed or tested to treat coronavirus. Now there's another that's showing some promise. 

 Molnupiravir is an antiviral drug in clinical trials.

We talked with molecular epidemiologist Dr. Jill Roberts about it being a treatment for COVID-19. 

She says the way that it works is it messes up viral replication. It's shown some use against other viruses such as SARS and MERS.

Dr. Roberts says during an animal study on ferrets, they tried to get coronavirus to spread, and it wouldn't. So while it's a treatment designed to prevent hospitalizations and deaths, it also seems to prevent transmission. 

While there is no timetable about when this would be available, it could be promising for future viruses or pandemics. 

"This is a great tool to have to be able to know for future viruses maybe if we get a mutant that actually circumvents the vaccines, this drug will still work."

Dr. Roberts says now that Merck is behind it, it has the resources to do a big enough trial to send to the FDA to get Emergency Use Authorization or even full authorization. 

A couple of other positives she pointed out with this drug: it can also be used for people who do not want to get a vaccine or don't have the resources to get shots. And, this is a pill, unlike other treatments right now that are IVs and have to be given at a treatment center. 

IISER, UNMC scientists explore Rapamycin as repurposed drug to treat elderly, obese with COVID-19

 

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Bhopal and the University of Nebraska Medical Centre (UNMC) in the US have identified a drug that can be repurposed to treat COVID-19 . According to the team, 'Rapamycin' is currently being used for treating cancer patients and those who have undergone organ transplantation. Its analogues are commonly available in India and abroad. The research was published in a peer-reviewed paper recently in the reputed International Elsevier journal, Chemico Biological Interactions. The researchers showed that the biochemical working of this drug molecule points to its promise in the treatment of COVID-19 .

"The development of a new drug is time-consuming and cannot be relied on as a solution in combating the immediate pandemic. Drug repurposing is an attractive solution, wherein, an existing drug is used to treat another related or unrelated ailment may be tested against COVID-19 ," said Amjad Husain, Principal Scientist, and Chief Executive Officer, Innovation and Incubation Center for Entrepreneurship (IICE), IISER Bhopal.

"Since the repurposed drug has gone through the clinical development process for the treatment of other diseases and has already been tested for toxicity, many steps in preclinical and early clinical development can be avoided and the drug can be directly tested on COVID-19 subjects in phase-II trials," he added.

An example of such a repurposed drug is Remdesivir, which was originally developed to treat Hepatitis C infection. The drug has shown limited success in treating COVID-19 patients.

Identification of more such drugs is important given the scale of the pandemic. Rapamycin works differently from Remdesivir. While the latter targets the virus itself, Rapamycin targets the host proteins and may resist the infection.

"Using repurposed drug such as Rapamycin that targets mTOR, a central molecule affecting multiple signalling pathways, may yield a significant clinical benefit for the treatment of COVID-19 ," Husain said.

According to the team, one of the main challenges in developing antiviral drugs for COVID-19 has been the extensive mutations that the virus undergoes, which makes one antiviral drug ineffective against another mutant, and the development of drug-resistant strains.

"Treatment with drugs such as Rapamycin will not face that problem because it acts on host proteins and not on the virus. Rapamycin inhibits protein synthesis and can also arrest virus replication, irrespective of the type of mutant. At a biochemical level, apart from inhibiting protein synthesis, Rapamycin has been known to inhibit pro-inflammatory cytokines.

"It is known that severe COVID-19 infection results in an increase in inflammatory cytokines in a process known as the 'cytokine storm'. The inhibitory action of Rapamycin towards cytokines also makes it a promising treatment for COVID-19 ," he said.

In addition, Rapamycin is known to reduce obesity through various pathways and this can help in mitigating the severity of COVID-19 effects in obese people.

"Rapamycin is also known to induce autophagy, a cellular recycling process that helps in eliminating the damaged proteins and delaying ageing. Given the connection between age and COVID mortality - more fatalities with older people, the anti-ageing properties of Rapamycin can have protective effects against COVID-10 induced morbidities," Hussain said.