Nature: more than 80 clinical trials are testing new coronavirus drugs

February 21, 2020 / Biovalley BIOON / -- covid-19 is a disease caused by coronavirus So far, nearly 2000 people have died and over 70000 people have been infected in China In the public registry of Chinese clinical trials, new drugs are listed along with the Millennium traditional therapies, while the registry of Chinese clinical trials is growing every day There are no known treatments, and doctors are eager to help those with the disease, but scientists warn that only careful trials can determine what works Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist of the World Health Organization (who), said that its team has been evaluating many clinical trials in China and has developed a clinical trial program that can be performed by clinicians from all over the world at the same time These efforts would be futile if the Chinese trials (up to 600 people per trial) were designed without strict criteria for study parameters, such as control groups, randomization and measurement of clinical results As a result, the World Health Organization has worked with Chinese scientists to develop standards from the very beginning For example, regardless of the treatment being tested, a person's recovery or decline should be measured in the same way "We want to be able to bring some structure into the whole thing," explains Swaminathan "Image source: the clinical trial scheme of feature China Barcroft media via Getty is designed flexibly, allowing researchers from all over the world to gather their results over time It will compare two or three scientifically proven treatments, including a combination of HIV drugs (lopinavir and ritonavir) and an experimental antiviral drug called readcivir "It's our first priority to get clinical trials going smoothly, because if we can get information about what works and what doesn't, we can now benefit our patients," Swaminathan said "The best guess is that China has started testing drugs that are included in the who master plan The Chinese clinical trial registry, a database of biomedical research in China, lists these trials and dozens of other controlled trials for existing therapies, experimental procedures and traditional drugs These treatments have different amounts of evidence to support their effectiveness These two AIDS drugs can block the enzymes needed for virus replication In animal studies, they have reduced levels of coronaviruses that cause severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (mers) Ridcivir, a nucleoside analogue produced by Gilead, a biotechnology company based in foster City, California, has also had some success with animal coronaviruses In January this year, researchers reported that a person in the United States had survived covid-19 infection after receiving readcivir treatment In the first week of February, two placebo-controlled trials of ridcivir were launched in China, involving 760 patients with covid-19 Jiang Shibo, a virologist at Fudan University in Shanghai, said the studies should be completed by the end of April, and radcivir could be approved by Chinese authorities as early as may "But by then, the epidemic may have passed," he said Novel coronavirus has been initiated in China Chloroquine is a malaria drug that can kill new coronavirus in cell culture (recently named SARS-CoV-2) Researchers are looking at whether steroids can reduce inflammation in patients with severe covid-19 or can cause harm "It's going to be interesting to see these results," said yazdan yazdanpanah, an epidemiologist at INSERM, the French National Institutes of health in Paris He added that if the epidemic continues to spread, clinical researchers around the world will need this information Another study, a 300 person controlled trial, will test sera from survivors of covid-19 In the past few decades, this basic treatment has achieved some success in treating other viruses The principle of this method is that an antibody gradually accumulated by a person to fight against the virus can quickly help a newly infected person defeat the virus Two stem cell tests are also registered in China In one study, a team from the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University injected 28 people with stem cells from menstrual blood and compared the results with those of those who did not receive the injections So far, there is little evidence that stem cells can clear away coronavirus infection Swaminathan said who had no control over the work of researchers, but she said who issued ethical guidance on conducting trials during the 2016 outbreak It will soon issue a shorter report that is easier to understand In 15 trials registered in China, more than 2000 people are expected to participate in the research of various traditional Chinese medicines The largest of these is Shuanghuanglian, a Chinese herbal medicine containing the extract of Fructus Forsythiae, which is said to have been used to treat infections for more than 2000 years The trial involved 400 participants, including a control group who received standard care but no placebo Source: niaid-rml de Wit Fischer the World Health Organization is working with Chinese scientists to standardize the design of all studies, including those on traditional drugs These efforts stem from a controversial initiative last year, in which the group recognized traditional Chinese medicine in its disease profile Critics say who's approval amounts to support, but Swaminathan disagrees She said the WHO initiative helped the organization to codify medical terminology to assess herbal remedies as rigorously as drug testing "We want to test traditional medicine in a scientific way," she said "Moving forward as these trials begin, researchers are looking for new drugs to fight a variety of coronaviruses, including those that have not yet surfaced A spiral protein on the surface of SARS, mers and covid-19 virus is an attractive target Professor Jiang and other research groups have found compounds and antibodies attached to this spike that can prevent coronaviruses from invading human cells But Emily erbelding, a microbiologist at the National Institutes of health, warned that research like this was still in its early stages and that the compounds needed to be developed into drugs and tested in animals To promote covid-19 research, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced funding for the urgent award in early February As there are many possibilities and limited time for treatment, Jiang believes that with the progress of the trial, the World Health Organization should provide suggestions on which treatment should be continued and which should be abandoned He hopes to continue to study better and more extensive treatments after the outbreak Reference materials: [1] Amy maxmen More than 80 clinical trials launch to test coronavirus treatments Nature 578347-348 (2020) doi: 10.1038/d4158-020-00444-3 [2] Guangdi Li & Erik de clercq T herapeutic options for the 2019 new coronavirus (2019 ncov) Nature Reviews Drug discovery.2020 Doi: 10.1038/d41573-020-00016-0 【3】Timothy P Sheahan et al Comparative therapeutic efficacy of remdesivir and combination lopinavir， ritonavir， and interferon beta against MERS-CoV Nature Communications ISSN 2041-1723 (online) DOIhttps：//doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-13940-6 【4】Michelle L Holshue et al First Case of 2019 Novel Coronavirus in the United States N Engl J Med http：//doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2001191 (2020) 【5】Wang， M et al Remdesivir and chloroquine effectively inhibit the recently emerged novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in vitro Cell Res https：//doi.org/10.1038/s41422-020-0282-0 (2020) 【6】Marano， G et al Convalescent plasma： new evidence for an old therapeutic tool？
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