The virus that causes the COVID-19 disease has put the world in check, and since its appearance at the beginning of the year, virology laboratories around the world have been working tirelessly in search of a treatment or vaccine to help contain it. One strategy is to review the drugs that are already available against other conditions to see if they are effective against the new coronavirus.
Now, a team from the National Center for Biotechnology (CNB-CSIC), based in Madrid, has just announced a promising result: a drug used to treat myeloma has managed, in laboratory culture, to stop the multiplication of the HCoV-229E coronavirus , from the same family as our already familiar SARS-CoV-2.
In collaboration with the pharmaceutical company that discovered this drug, the researchers have carried out a series of controlled experiments in the laboratory: “we have seen that it not only inhibits virus replication, but also does so at very low concentrations and with one of the products that it is not toxic to people, ”explained Luis Enjuanes, co-director of the CNB-CSIC coronavirus laboratory, who has been working on this family of viruses for more than thirty years. ” The important thing is that this component had already been used previously in humans, so its approval if its effectiveness against the new coronavirus is confirmed could be very fast, ” he says.
However, as the researcher recalls, “we have observed that the drug manages to stop the multiplication of a type of human coronavirus, but we have not yet tested it with a fatal coronavirus for humans”, and that is the challenge despite the so encouraging.
Stages in experimentation with the new drug
As we have already said, there are still many steps to be taken in the investigation. The next is to test the drug with the SARS-CoV-1 coronavirus, which appeared in China in 2002 and caused an epidemic with severe and even fatal symptoms. This virus is similar to SARS-CoV-2, the cause of the current global pandemic.
Before being applied in humans, it will be necessary to follow certain steps. “We first need the biosafety permits to be able to evaluate the efficacy of the compound in the laboratory in cell cultures with SARS-CoV-2. Then it goes to a second phase in which preclinical tests with animals are carried out, and its effectiveness is demonstrated in animal models, and finally it goes to a third stage in which it is experimented in humans to confirm its effectiveness before applying it in the clinic. ”, Explained Sonia Zuñiga, virologist and co-director of the CNB-CSIC coronavirus laboratory.
How much time are we talking about? As we have already discussed, the advantage of this drug is that it is known to be safe in humans, and in fact the concentrations that have been used in experiments are lower than those commonly used clinically to treat myeloma patients. “When could we know if this drug is effective against the new coronavirus? It could be a matter of two or three months ”, concludes Enjuanes.
Source: CSIC
