Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has already made news for launching an effective coronavirus vaccine. Now it has already started early stage of the clinical trials of an oral antiviral drug that could be used to treat COVID-19. The official announcement was made by the company about the phase one of the trial, which is currently taking place in the United States.
The treatment is expected to be a protease inhibitor and the same tech could be used to treat HIV and hepatitis C. The protease inhibitors bind with the enzyme which is viral and prevents it from replicating in the cell. Pfizer while talking about its potential in the pre-clinical trials said that it showed potential in vitro anti-viral activity against SARS COV-2 and also other coronaviruses. This has indicated that the treatment could be used in future to treat coronavirus threats.
Mikel Dolsten, the Chief scientific officer in a statement said that managing the COVID-19 pandemic needs a preventive vaccine as well as a targeted treatment for people who contract the virus. Dolsten also expressed concerns that were related to the way the virus is constantly mutating. With the constantly global impact of the virus, it appears that it will be crucial to have therapeutic options at present as well as in future.
Talking about the potential medicine, the Chief scientific officer added that the medicine could be prescribed to the patient even with the initial signs of infection and without the need to hospitalize or be admitted to critical care. Apart from the drug, the company is also working on an intravenous anti-viral therapy that could be used to treat COVID-19 and is currently being used in clinical trials in patients who are hospitalized. At present the only anti-viral treatment that has been approved by the FDA is Gilead’s Remdesivir therapy. Pfizer informed that it will be sharing a report on the pre-clinical trials of the medicine on April 6, 2021.
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