Zineb Ibnouzahir, reporting for Le 360, writes that after the success that the use of chloroquine seems to meet with patients treated for Covid-19, other drugs tested around the world are proving their worth and bringing a new ray of hope.

Scientists around the world are working hard to develop vaccines and test effective treatments for the new coronavirus disease. Round the world trials in progress.

In Australia, a proven anti-parasite

A team of Australian researchers from Monash University in Melbourne has discovered that a drug, available worldwide, can kill the virus in the laboratory, in just 48 hours.

Ivermectin is an anti-parasitic medication, approved to treat parasitic conditions, such as rosacea, head lice and scabies. Developed in 1975 and since widely used worldwide since the early 1980s, this drug has been shown to be just as effective, in in vitro tests, against other viruses, such as the influenza virus, Zika virus and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

After tests by these Australian researchers, Ivermectin also appears to be an inhibitor of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in vitro.

The research team, which worked with the Peter Doherty Institute of Infection and Immunity, another laboratory in Melbourne, was able to demonstrate that Ivermectin reduced the viral RNA COVID-19 present in cell culture by 93% of samples analysed after 24 hours, and 99.8% of these samples after 48 hours.

This reduction in viral load, by around 5,000 times, suggests that the drug in question could potentially eradicate the virus in vivo.

However, Australian scientists warn that although this drug is already widely used worldwide, and considered to be a safe drug, these very recently performed tests still need to be tested on humans to determine the effective dosage that would counter the Covid-19.

These tests were the subject of the publication of a study report in a specialised journal, "Antiviral research", which opens the door to a wide use of this drug, already widely used throughout the world. The article advises administering this drug to patients with Covid-19.

Already approved by the Food and Drug Administration of the United States (FDA) but also by the WHO, which included it in its list of essential drugs, in particular against cases of blindness of inhabitants living near rivers of countries from Africa, as well as against scabies, Ivermectin could therefore be widely used to treat patients with Covid-19.


Drug capable of blocking infection discovered in Sweden and Canada

Researchers from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and the University of British Columbia in the Province of Canada have also reportedly found a drug that can block the disease before it infects body cells human.

APN01. This is the name of this drug developed by Aperion Biologics, and already tested against lung diseases. Today, there is a great deal of interest in this, having received regulatory approvals to be tested in Austria, Germany and Denmark, on 200 patients tested positive for Covid-19 as part of a study in its Phase II.

Scientists' study of human cell cultures and organoids published in the specialised journal Cell explains how these researchers used tissue samples from a patient with Covid-19 to isolate and culture SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19 disease.

In cell cultures in the laboratory, these researchers were able to show how the advanced protein of SARS-CoV-2 binds to a cell surface receptor, an angiotensin 2 converting enzyme (ACE2) in order to enter our cells.

It is the same mechanism as that of the original SARS virus, which started an epidemic in 2003, and which SARS-CoV-2 uses to bind to our cells, and which has already been described by several researchers in previous studies.

By adding a genetically modified variant of this protein, called "human recombinant angiotensin converting enzyme 2" (hrsACE2), the researchers wanted to test whether the virus could be prevented from infecting cells.

The result now published in this scientific journal shows that hrsACE2 reduced the viral growth of SARS-CoV-2 by a factor of 1,000 to 5,000 in cell cultures.

"We believe that adding this enzyme copy, hrsACE2, causes the virus to attach to the copy instead of the actual cells," said Ali Mirazimi, assistant professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine at Karolinska Institute, and one of the corresponding authors of this study.

"It diverts the virus from infection of cells to the same degree and should lead to a reduction in the growth of the virus in the lungs and other organs."

Covid-19: everything you need to know about chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, and their marketed drugs

"Our study provides new information on how SARS-CoV-2 infects cells in the body, including in the blood vessels and kidneys," said Ali Mirazimi.

"We hope that our results may contribute to the development of a new drug treatment that can help patients with Covid-19".

The current study is limited to cell cultures and artificial miniature organs. However, this same drug has already been tested against acute lung damage, acute respiratory distress syndrome and pulmonary arterial hypertension, in phase I and II clinical studies.

The results could therefore be promising for the treatment of Covid-19 patients who are in the early stages of contamination, according to the researchers. Additional research is needed to determine if it is also effective in later stages of the disease's development.


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