Remdesivir – the new hope against Corona – Coronavirus –

Remdesivir is one of the most promising agents in the fight against the new coronavirus and is already used in individual cases to treat patients. Randomized clinical trials with remdesivir are already underway in several countries.

According to the Stat website, which specializes in health issues, the drug has had a big effect on crown patients at a Chicago hospital participating in clinical trials. Remdesivir has also been used to treat Ebola.

You may have to wait longer to get a vaccine, but now there is a ray of hope in terms of medications. An ingredient called Remdesivir appears to be promising.

To accelerate the development of treatment options for SARS-CoV-2, pharmaceutical companies may provide drugs that have not yet been approved, which can then be used in the course of clinical trials or as part of medical trials under high security requirements. . The American company Gilead has also announced that it intends to donate the full medium-term quantity of its developing drug (Remdesivir).

Gilead had promising drugs in development many years ago when the SARS and MERS pathogens first appeared. The company can now build on this and there is hope that a successful result will be achieved faster than usual.

The drug was also used by Austrian clinics based on individual healing experiments.

In a small-scale experiment in monkeys, the first successful treatment with remdesivir was shown against Covid-19 coronavirus-induced lung disease. According to scientists commissioned by the US government. In the USA, the health status of monkeys treated with the virus inhibitory agent improved significantly after just twelve hours.

The preliminary results of the study have not yet been independently evaluated. For the experiment, the scientists deliberately infected two groups of six rhesus monkeys, each with the pathogen SARS-CoV-2. One of the two groups received Remdesivir, an agent developed by the pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, twelve hours after infection, but not the control group.

The researchers administered the drug to the monkeys in the treatment group shortly before the concentration of virus in the lungs peaked. According to scientists, the health status of the treated monkeys improved significantly 12 hours after receiving the first dose of remdesivir. According to the study report, this trend continued throughout the one-week study period.

According to the researchers, one of the animals in the treatment group had mild respiratory difficulties despite remdesivir therapy. In the control group, however, the health status of the six monkeys rapidly deteriorated. They all had severe respiratory difficulties.

The researchers found a significantly lower concentration of virus in the lungs of the monkeys treated with Remdesivir than in the untreated monkeys. Lung damage was also less in animals in the treatment group.

A survey by the Austrian Institute for Health Technology Assessment (AIHTA) shows that a total of 155 drugs and 79 vaccines are currently being worked on to combat Covid-19 worldwide. Consequently, most of these medications in development are already approved for other infections. So far, none of the vaccine candidates has reached the developmental stage.

The 155 drugs currently tested for their activity against SARS-CoV-2 are based on one or more antiviral agents: these are remdesivir, lopinavir and ritonavir (brand name: Kaletra), favipirvir (Avigan), darunavir (Prezista), chloroquine Phosphate (Resochin), Hydroxychloroquine (Plaquenil), Camostat Mesilate (Foipan), APN01 (rhACE2), Tocilizumab (Roactemra), Sarilumab (Kevzara) and Interferon beta 1a (SNG001). “Since most of these active ingredients are medications that are already approved for other indications, international regulators emphasize the need for solid evidence, that is, approval studies for the effectiveness of Covid-19,” said the director of AIHTA, Claudia Wild.

The candidate vaccines identified by the AIHTA are live vaccines, that is, with weakened virus strains, killed vaccines containing viral proteins, or gene-based vaccines with special DNA or mRNA. Most of these projects are currently in the development stage and have not yet been approved.

Eleven drugs and eight vaccine candidates are particularly advanced in development and are considered particularly promising in the specialized literature. For these, experts have written brief descriptions with additional information.