Professor Nicolas Doucet and his team at Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) made a major breakthrough earlier this year in the field of evolutionary conservation of molecular dynamics in enzymes. Their work, published in the journal Structure, points to potential applications in health, including the development of new drugs to treat serious diseases such as cancer or to counter antibiotic resistance.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute researchers Gaetano Montelione and Christopher Cioffi will use a five-year, $3.5 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, to develop a low-dose, oral COVID antiviral drug that can be administered at home.
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Remdesivir is currently the only antiviral drug approved in the U.S. for treating COVID-19 patients. In a paper published this week in Cell Reports, researchers from The University of Texas at Austin, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai showed that four drugs used to treat hepatitis C render remdesivir 10 times better at inhibiting the coronavirus in cell cultures.
These results indicate that a mixture containing remdesivir and a repurposed hepatitis C virus (HCV) drug could potentially function as a combination antiviral therapy for SARS-CoV-2. Such an antiviral could provide an immediate treatment for unvaccinated people who become infected and for vaccinated people whose immunity has waned.
Remdesivir is currently the only antiviral drug approved in the US for treating COVID-19 patients.
The results, published in
Cell Reports, indicate that a mixture containing remdesivir and a repurposed hepatitis C virus (HCV) drug could potentially function as a combination antiviral therapy for SARS-CoV-2.
Such an antiviral could provide an immediate treatment for unvaccinated people who become infected and for vaccinated people whose immunity has waned.
Because these hepatitis drugs are already approved for use and their potential side effects are known, such a combination therapy could be tested in humans more quickly than for a new drug. One big drawback with remdesivir, however, is that it must be administered intravenously, limiting its use to patients already admitted to the hospital.