https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article241804921.htmlQuote:
A new antiviral drug will be tested in human clinical trials that could help doctors treat COVID-19 and it can be taken as a pill.
UNC-Chapel Hill researchers and a team of other scientists found that the new drug, called EIDD-2801, can prevent and reduce severe lung damage in testing that involved mice infected with coronavirus, according to a new study published Monday. The human clinical trials for the drug are expected to start this spring.
"This new drug not only has high potential for treating COVID-19 patients, but also appears effective for the treatment of other serious coronavirus infections," senior author Ralph Baric said in a news release.
Baric is William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of epidemiology at UNC-Chapel Hill. He's running a lab at UNC's Gillings School of Global Public Health that's working on fighting the global pandemic and finding a cure for the coronavirus disease. More than 1 million people have been infected with COVID-19 and more than 70,000 people have died from it.
"Currently, no antiviral drugs have been approved to treat SARS-CoV-2 or any of the other coronaviruses that cause human disease," according to UNC. But Baric and this team are working to change that.
Ralph Beric, a faculty member at UNC-Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health, is a leading researcher on coronaviruses. UNC-Chapel Hill
The new drug is a form of the antiviral compound EIDD-1931 that can be taken orally, which is easier than using an IV and helps it absorb and travel to the lungs.
https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/04/03/scitranslmed.abb5883
Just something else for our medical members to digest. Obviously we won't be seeing this drug for a while, but it's still good that there is more in the pipeline. Hopefully the FDA will expedite the trials as much as safely possible.
"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." - Sir Winston Churchill