Over the past year, global forces have focused on one goal: defeating covid. To do this, the most powerful governments have funded researchers and scientists from around the world to develop – quickly – a vaccine that can work. This joint effort has resulted in several effective vaccines being available in just one year. Now that the vaccination campaign continues apace, the US government has decided to fund another type of research, which until now had been sidelined: that of a anticovid pill.
The US Department of Health and Human Services (HSS) unveiled the Antiviral Program for Pandemics on June 17, a program that will contribute more than $ 3 billion to the development of a new drug that allows anyone , as soon as the first symptoms appear, to take it and stop the coronavirus in the bud. If all goes as planned, the first pills could be ready by the end of 2021.
Too late. So far the only FDA-approved drug that has been shown to be effective against the covid virus has been remdesivir (originally developed as a potential cure for the Ebola virus), but it is used in patients who are already hospitalized, to whom it is given intravenously. Its current formulation, in fact, does not allow its oral intake during the first stages of the disease, since the compound would not survive the passage from the mouth, to the stomach, to the circulatory system.
New studies. Now researchers around the world are studying other antivirals already known to see how they react to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. This is the case with the molnupiravir, developed in 2019 and effective against several viruses, whose tests, after suffering a first setback in April 2020 (due to the poor results found in hospitalized patients), were resumed last autumn on patients in the early stages of the disease and they are giving good results.
Another drug that has received the attention of the US government is theAT-527, already effective against hepatitis C, which according to initial analyzes could also work against covid. The pharmaceutical company Pfizer is also at the forefront of research for an anticovid pill, and is developing one from a molecule created in the early 2000s to fight SARS.
Investment for the future. Perhaps the research started too late, and perhaps the first antiviral tablets will not be available for a few years: but, even if that were the case, it would still be an investment for the future. Let us not forget that, in the globalized world in which we live, we will (unfortunately) have to get used to the spread of new viruses and pandemics. Funding research now is still a good idea: “It could help us with this pandemic, and provide us with a first line of defense against the next one,” he points out in an article in the New York Times Mark Namchuk (Harvard Medical School). The HHS program, in fact, not only supports the research of drugs against covid, but also against other high-risk pathogens, such as flaviviruses (which cause, among others, yellow fever, dengue and Nile fever) or alphaviruses (which cause mosquito-borne diseases). “There will always be a threat,” says Anthony Fauci, key supporter of the program, “There will always be a need for drugs.”