New COVID-19 pill shows promising results in preliminary tests

An investigational drug to treat Covid-19, which promises to be a kind of Tamiflu – a selective antiviral against the influenza virus – has obtained positive results in a preliminary study, according to the report The Wall Street Journal.

The pill, called molnupiravir, is developed by Ridgeback Biotherapeutics LP and Merck MRK & Co., and significant reduction in infectious virus in patients in a phase two study after five days of treatment.

If at the end of the tests it is shown to be able to treat people with Covid-19 who show symptoms, the drug it would become the first oral antiviral against the disease.

Unlike other drugs that target the spike protein that protrudes from the surface of the virus, molnupiravir attacks part of the virus which helps it to reproduce.

The mid-phase, or phase 2, trial recruited 182 people and studied the effect of various doses of molnupiravir in patients who had developed symptoms of Covid-19 in the previous week, who had tested positive for illness in the past four days and that they had not been hospitalized.

The tests did not detect the infectious virus in any of the volunteers who took molnupiravir twice a day after five days of treatment, while 24% of those who received a placebo did.Ridgeback reported at the Virtual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections held this Saturday.

Patients who took higher doses of the drug also had lower infectious virus levels than the placebo group after three days.

Wayne Holman, co-founder of Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, said the results indicate that the drug stops the new coronavirus from replicating in the body and offers the first evidence that an oral antiviral drug may be effective against covid-19. The results also suggest, but do not prove, that the drug can reduce disease, ”added Holman, who is also the CEO of Ridgeback Capital, an investment firm. Ridgeback Biotherapeutics has an approved treatment for Ebola.

The antiviral is currently being tested in a phase 3 trial that will end in May. Merck explained that this final step is exploring whether molnupiravir helps prevent hospitalizations and deaths from Covid-19.

The experimental drug It could play an important role in helping people who are sick but not hospitalized as well, fulfilling the same kind of role Tamiflu does for influenza, some infectious disease experts say.

“It’s tempting and interesting, but it’s not exactly 100%,” he told the WSJ Carl Dieffenbach, Director of the AIDS Division at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “What we need to confirm is that there is a clinical benefit.”

Medical researchers are struggling to find new drugs to improve the performance of the few therapies currently available. They are also looking for effective therapies against new, rapidly spreading variants of the coronavirus. “The obvious need is the development of potent antivirals that act directly on SARS-CoV-2,” said Anthony Fauci., Chief Medical Advisor to President Biden.

Only one antiviral has been approved to date, remdesivir from Gilead Sciences Inc., which has only been shown to have modest benefit in hospitalized patients.

Merck & Co Inc abandoned a Covid-19 vaccine project last January when one of its prototypes failed to elicit a favorable immune response, so it decided to focus on creating therapies to help people hospitalized.

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