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A researcher at the Openlab Cellular and Genetic Technologies Laboratory at the Federal University of Kazan who works with biomaterial.
Yegor Aleyev | TASS via Getty Images
Health officials and scientists around the world are competing to develop vaccines and discover effective treatments for the coronavirus, which has infected more than 4.2 million people worldwide in just four months, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
There are no tried and tested treatments, and US health officials. USA They say a vaccine could take at least a year to 18 months.
On May 1, the Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization for the remdesivir of antiviral drugs from Gilead Sciences. This after a government clinical trial found that Covid-19 patients who took remdesivir generally recovered after 11 days. That is four days faster than those who did not take the drug. The EUA means that doctors in the US USA They may use remdesivir in hospitalized patients with Covid-19 even if it has not been formally approved by the agency.
Even if the drug wins final approval, infectious disease specialists and scientists say researchers will need an arsenal of drugs to fight this respiratory virus, which can also attack the cardiovascular, nervous, digestive, and other major systems of the body.
Below is a list of the main vaccines and medications in development to combat Covid-19.
Vaccines
Nicolas Asfouri | AFP | fake pictures
Modern
- Vaccine: mRNA
- Development: Phase 1 test almost complete, Phase 2 test ready to start
The National Institutes of Health, an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, has accelerated work with the biotech company Moderna to develop a vaccine to prevent Covid-19. The company began the first phase 1 human trial with 45 volunteers who tested a vaccine to prevent the disease in March and has been approved to start phase 2 soon, which would expand the test to 600 people, in late May or June. If all goes well, your vaccine could be in production in early July.
Scientist Xinhua Yan works in Moderna’s laboratory in Cambridge, MA on February 28, 2020. Moderna has developed the first experimental coronavirus medicine, but an approved treatment is more than a year away.
David L. Ryan | Boston Globe | fake pictures
Moderna’s potential vaccine contains genetic material called messenger RNA, or mRNA, that was produced in a laboratory. MRNA is a genetic code that tells cells how to make a protein and was found in the outer shell of the new coronavirus, according to researchers at the Kaiser Permanente Health Research Institute in Washington. The mRNA instructs the body’s own cellular mechanisms to produce proteins to produce those that mimic the virus’s proteins, thereby producing an immune response.
Johnson and Johnson
- Vaccine: modified adenovirus
- Development: preclinical
Johnson & Johnson began development of the Covid-19 vaccine in January. The J&J lead vaccine candidate will enter a phase 1 human clinical trial in September, the company announced in March, and clinical data on the trial is expected before the end of the year. If the vaccine works well, the company said it could produce 600 to 900 million doses by April 2021.
The company said it is using the same technologies it used to make its experimental Ebola vaccine, which was provided to people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in late 2019. It involves combing the genetic material of the coronavirus with a modified adenovirus known to be known. which causes common colds in humans.
Inovio Pharmaceutical
- Vaccine: INO-4800
- Development: phase 1 trials
Inovio began its initial-stage clinical trials for a potential vaccine on April 6, becoming the second potential Covid-19 vaccine to undergo human testing after Moderna. It says it will enroll up to 40 healthy adult volunteers in Pennsylvania and Missouri and expect initial immune responses and safety data in late summer. Inovio made his potential vaccine by adding genetic material from the virus into synthetic DNA, which the researchers hope will cause the immune system to make antibodies against it.
Oxford University
- Vaccine: ChAdOx1 nCoV-19
- Development: phase 1 trials
A coronavirus vaccine developed by researchers at the University of Oxford began phase 1 of human trials on April 23. British Health Minister Matt Hancock said he would provide £ 20 million ($ 24.5 million) to help finance the Oxford project. The team said their goal is to produce 1 million doses by September.
General view of the Oxford University, Old Road Campus and Trials Clinic poster on May 2, 2020 in Oxford, England.
Catherine Ivill | fake pictures
The Oxford researchers call their experimental vaccine ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, and it is a kind of recombinant viral vector vaccine. Like the J&J team, the researchers will put genetic material from the coronavirus into another virus that has been modified. They will then inject the virus into a human, hoping to elicit an immune response.
Pfizer
- Vaccine: BNT162
- Development: clinical trials
Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, which is working alongside German drug maker BioNTech, began testing an experimental vaccine to fight coronavirus in the United States on May 5. The US drug maker expects to produce “millions” of vaccines by the end of this year and expects to increase it to “hundreds of millions” of doses next year. The experimental vaccine uses mRNA technology, similar to Moderna. MRNA is a genetic code that tells cells what to build, in this case, an antigen that can induce an immune response to the virus.
In this photo illustration, the logo of the American multinational pharmaceutical corporation Pfizer is displayed on a smartphone with a computer model of the coronavirus COVID-19 in the background.
Budrul Chukrut | SOPA Images | fake pictures
Sanofi and GSK
- Vaccine: Unnamed
- Development: preclinical
Sanofi and GSK announced on April 14 that they had signed an agreement to jointly create a Covid-19 vaccine by the end of next year. The companies plan to start clinical trials in the second half of 2020 and, if successful, produce up to 600 million doses next year. To produce the vaccine, Sanofi said it will reuse its never-hitting SARS vaccine candidate, while GSK will provide pandemic adjuvant technology, which is aimed at improving the immune response in vaccines.
Novavax
- Vaccine: NVX-CoV2373
- Development: preclinical
Novavax announced on April 8 that it found a candidate for the coronavirus vaccine and would begin human trials in May with preliminary results expected in July. Called NVX-CoV2373, the potential vaccine is using adjuvant technology and will try to neutralize the so-called spike protein, found on the surface of the coronavirus, which is used to enter the host cell.
Drugs and therapies
Bottles of remdesivir drug for investigational coronavirus disease (COVID-19) are capped at a Gilead Sciences facility in La Verne, California, USA. USA, March 18, 2020. Photograph taken on March 18, 2020.
Gilead Sciences Inc | Reuters
Gilead Sciences
- Drug: Remdesivir
- Development: late stage trials
The FDA granted emergency use authorization for Gilead’s remdesivir drug to treat Covid-19 on May 1. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases published the results of their study showing that patients who took remdesivir generally recovered faster than those who did not take the drug. Despite the fact that the drug was granted for emergency use, there are still several ongoing clinical trials testing whether it is effective in stopping the replication of the coronavirus.
Remdesivir has shown promise in treating SARS and MERS, which are also caused by coronaviruses. Some health authorities in the US The US, China, and other parts of the world have been using remdesivir, which has been tested as a possible treatment for the Ebola outbreak, in hopes that the drug may improve outcomes for Covid-19 patients. The company said it expects to produce more than 140,000 rounds of its 10-day treatment regimen by the end of May and anticipates it can do 1 million rounds by the end of this year.
New York State and Others
- Drug: hydroxychloroquine
- Development: several clinical trials
Hydroxychloroquine is a decades-old antimalarial drug promoted by President Donald Trump as a potential “game changer”.
The drug has been proven to work in the treatment of lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, but not Covid-19. A handful of small studies of its use in coronavirus patients published in France and China have raised hopes that the drug may help fight the virus. However, the drug, which is available as a generic drug and is also produced under the brand name Plaquenil by French drug maker Sanofi, can have serious side effects, such as muscle weakness and cardiac arrhythmia.
A bottle of hydroxychloroquine sulfate from Prasco Laboratories is organized for a photograph in the Queens district of New York, USA. USA, Tuesday April 7, 2020.
Christopher Occhicone | Bloomberg | fake pictures
The FDA issued a warning against taking the drug outside of a hospital or in a formal clinical trial setting after learning of reports of “serious heart rhythm problems” in patients.
On March 24, researchers at NYU Langone in New York launched one of the largest hydroxychloroquine clinical trials in the country after federal health regulators hastened approvals for coronavirus research, allowing scientists from The whole country skip months of bureaucracy. It is one of more than a dozen formal studies in the United States looking at treatment for coronavirus, according to ClinicalTrials.gov.
But the first results are not so promising. An observational study published on the JAMA Network on Monday and led by the New York State Department of Health, in collaboration with the University of Albany, found that it did not help coronavirus patients. Worse still, when taken with azithromycin, which French researchers attribute to accelerated recovery times, it puts patients at significantly higher risk of cardiac arrest.
Zhejiang Hisun Pharmaceutical
- Drug: favipiravir
- Development: intermediate stage trial
Favipiravir is a flu medicine sold by Fujifilm Holding under the name Avigan. Researchers in China are testing the drug to see if it is effective in fighting the coronavirus. Most of the preclinical data on favipiravir is derived from its influenza and Ebola activity; however, the agent also demonstrated extensive activity against other RNA viruses, according to researchers in Japan.
Regeneron and Sanofi
- Drug: Kevzara
- Development: clinical trials
Regeneron and Sanofi began clinical trials of the rheumatoid arthritis medication Kevzara in patients with Covid-19 in March. The drug inhibits a pathway believed to contribute to lung inflammation in patients with the more severe forms of Covid-19.
The companies announced last month that the drug showed promise for treating the sickest coronavirus patients in a clinical trial, but it was not beneficial for patients with less advanced disease, prompting companies to stop testing the drug. in that group.
Eli Lilly
- Drug: baricitinib
- Development: clinical trials
Eli Lilly, in association with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is looking to see if her rheumatoid arthritis medication, baricitinib, is effective against the coronavirus. The company theorizes that the anti-inflammatory effects of baricitinib could slow the body’s reaction to the virus.
Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca and Regeneron
- Drugs: antibody treatments
- Development: various stages
While some drug makers are looking for vaccines to stop the virus, Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca and Regeneron, among other companies, are working on so-called antibody treatments, which are made to act as immune cells and can provide protection after exposure. to the virus. Earlier this month, Regeneron said his treatment may be available later this summer or fall.
