While it may be quicker than developing a vaccine, finding the right drugs to treat the disease will still be tricky.
The world waits with bated breath for a vaccine for COVID-19, but some researchers believe that drugs to treat the disease will be approved before any vaccine candidate. And one way to get faster treatments for the disease is to repurpose older drugs.
That thought has already borne fruit with the recent regulatory approval of Gilead Science’s remdesivir, an experimental drug initially developed to treat Ebola. Last week the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted remdesivir Emergency Use Authorization. Other drugs already in use that have been used to treat the novel pandemic include the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine. A recent paper published in the British Journal of Pharmacology reinforces the notion that it will be quicker to identify drugs to treat the novel coronavirus rather than a vaccine, which by all estimates could take 12 to 18 months.
While it may be quicker than developing a vaccine, finding the right drugs to treat the disease will still be tricky. The researchers said it will be important to use drugs that target parts of the cells the virus typically attaches to. More specifically, the researchers pointed to the key cellular proteins the virus binds to, TMPRSS2 and ACE2. Anthony Davenport, a professor of cardiovascular pharmacology from the University of Cambridge and an author of the paper, said finding drugs that target those proteins could potentially speed up the development of COVID-19 treatments, CNBC reported.
“We can focus on repurposing drugs that already have regulatory approval or are in the late stages of clinical trials,” he said. “If they can now be shown to be effective in Covid-19, they could be brought to clinical use relatively quickly.”
Last month, Excelra, a data and analytics company, released its COVID-19 Drug Repurposing Database, which presents a compilation of previously approved small molecules and biologics with known preclinical, pharmacokinetic, pharmacodynamic, and toxicity profiles that can rapidly enter either Phase II or II clinical trials on fast track basis for COVID-19. In addition, the database also includes information on promising drug candidates that are in various ‘clinical, pre-clinical and experimental’ stages of drug discovery and development for COVID-19.
Davenport noted that any potential COVID-19 drug will need to focus on the three key stages of infection. Those stages are preventing the virus from entering cells, halting its replication if it gets inside the cells and reducing any damages that occur to the body, particularly the heart and lungs. There are currently hundreds of drugs under investigation for COVID-19, not including the 100 or so vaccine candidates under development.
“There’s unlikely to be a single magic bullet — we will probably need several drugs in our armory, some that will need be used in combination with others,” Steve Alexander, associate professor of molecular pharmacology at the University of Nottingham and one of the paper’s authors told CNBC. “The important thing is that these drugs are cheap to produce and easy to manufacture (so that) we can ensure access to affordable drugs across the globe.”
The study authors stressed that companies and other research institutions must act quickly in finding these repurposed drugs as cases of COVID-19 are expected to decline in the summer months. They urged speed in order to recruit potential patients for clinical trials to assess the repurposed drugs ahead of concerns over an impending second outbreak in the fall.
