Charles Jillings, CEO of Utilico, energized by strong economic momentum across Latin America. Watch the video here.
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Stu, check out the BBC Coverage thread lower down the board. There is a link to a BBC article confirming inhaled inferferon beta
Sea Boy,
Gov' website states, "to have at least 2 effective treatments this year, either in a tablet or capsule form."
Unless I've missed something (could be the case)then we're not going to be one of those 2, which to me is a really important point that's not been conveyed.
I do think we will be considered within the other secondary goal stated;
"also be required to create a pipeline of additional promising novel antivirals for potential deployment in 2022 and beyond"
I'm not trying to nitpick as very much appreciate your input but all should be clear it's not us as a primary goal candidate.
IMO
SeaBoy - excellent post, did you notice they have released the job advert for the task force lead?
The key takeaway from the advert is they are looking for 2 drugs to be available in time for the autumn winter virus season but they are also tasking the lead with developing a pipeline of drugs that will come on stream in 2022.
Purely based on progress through trials we stand a good chance of being in the running for one of the early treatments, even if in the future the pipeline of additional treatments eat away at our share of the pie which is always inevitable.
SeaBoy
That's a lot of work and effort you put in thank you
Seaboy, great post, thanks for sharing your hard work in putting this together. The company is truly in a very special place, to pull this off will be amazing. Agree, all the signs are pointing in the right direction.
A balanced view and argument is needed here and it's important to consider all of these treatments as potential sticking points. I'm going to say that there's a moderate chance that we could be looking at PF-07321332 and Molnupiravir as being the other oral treatments that could emerge along with us and among the treatment options. Both PF-07321332 and Molnupiravir sound very promising and their progress in trials is something I'm watching like a hawk at the moment, but PF-07321332 is in its very early stages and I can't see them emerging before us. In my opinion those two drugs are still quite some way off, much further behind us in terms of trials, haven't jumped through as many hoops as we have, and don't have the clinical backing of medics around the world like we do, especially with the ACE2 receptor science being one of the last missing pieces of the interferon puzzle that slotted into place very recently and the limelight that interferon beta has enjoyed in recent times.
There may be other oral treatments I've missed, but I've listed some of the major players here. And after reviewing all of these potential competitors ad nauseum over the past 24 hours, I'm going to put my money where my mouth is and say that I believe SNG001 will be first to cross the line and become one of the main established treatments of choice for Covid-19 once results are out and if they're a success, and if successful then the UK government will surely want to be first in the queue to buy in bulk. Of all the aforementioned drugs, regulatory bodies would surely have the least trouble seeing SNG001 across the finish line after everything we will have proved when the time comes. Fair play to the other emerging suitors, but there's nobody else that's made the airwaves in the science world like we have up until now.
I'm happy to be corrected on any of the above. Nothing is to be taken as medical advice of course and this is all just my opinion and nothing more. Take care all.
(Post 3/3)
5) Ivermectin. This is an anti-parasitic drug that's been found to inhibit replication of SARS-CoV-2. A small trial was done on 72 patients in a hospital in Bangladesh I believe, where they tested the drug against three groups of hospitalised patients. The first group being used was a group that was given just the Ivermectin drug alone on hospitalised patients with Covid-19, the second group used were given Ivermectin in conjunction with an antibiotic which proved to be less effective, and the third group was just the placebo group. As far as I know, the initial group of patients that were given a five-day course of Ivermectin alone showed progress, but again it was a small trial so more data's probably required here.
6) Pfizer's PF-07321332. This is a protease inhibitor that's shown anti-viral activity against other coronaviruses as well as SARS-CoV-2. It targets the 3CL protease of the virus which the virus uses to, in layman's terms, break up longer protein chains or polyproteins into smaller protein chains so the virus can use those smaller protein chains to make more copies of itself. Quite innovative I must say and I hope they do well with this one, but it's a drug that's in its infancy at the moment with only being in P1 of clinical trials. It'll be a while before we see this come to fruition but I'm sure we'll be hearing more about it in the near future.
7) Merck's Molnupiravir. This is one of the promising front-runners in terms of outpatient treatment of Covid-19. This is a drug that's been showing promise in terms of replication inhibition in RNA viruses. In a P2 trial, statistical significance was found between number of patients that had negative nose cultures after five days compared with the placebo group, and a potential link was also found between a reduction in transmission. However, I don't think their hospital trial is going very well and as far as I can tell they've switched their efforts to the home setting. The drug's hospital trial showed no clinical benefit in hospitalised patients and therefore won't be proceeding to P3, however their outpatient trial has progressed to P3 to evaluate the efficacy of the 800mg twice daily dose of the drug. Don't quote me on that though but I think that's correct.
8) SNG001. An inhaled anti-viral agent containing interferon beta, a naturally occurring protein in the body and an existing treatment for MS. Our P2's (SG016) hospital arm was a huge success. SG016's hospital arm showed a staggering result with a special mention by Matt H in the House of Commons last summer. SG016's home arm has finished and results are due imminently, Activ-2 is underway, and our P3 (SG018) is being fast-tracked on a global scale and recruiting 610 patients worldwide. A publication in the Lancet, the short ACE2 receptor out in the open, and manufacturing being scaled up, something tells me Synairgen are on the brink after over a decade of waiting in the wings to emerge onto the world stage.
(Post 2/
Since Boris unveiled a new antiviral taskforce, I thought I'd brush up on where we're at in terms of competition with other oral treatments. Just going to go on a tangent here and say that for the record I don't like to think of the other drugs as competition because I'd like to think we're all in this together and need as many treatments as possible so we can overcome this dreadful virus once and for all. Oral treatments of course have its advantages over injectable treatments (such as monoclonal antibodies, convalescent plasma, and Tocilizumab), and logistically could prove to be a much more convenient treatment option. So how many are there, and what are the chances that the UK government have their eyes on us and we are the 'magic pill' they're talking about? Lets get into the treatments currently being trialled:
1) Upamostat (RHB-107). This serine protease inhibitor with both anti-viral and anti-inflammatory actions is being studied to see if either its low dose or its high dose is effective in clearing SARS-CoV-2. It's already showed effectiveness and apparently a very good safety profile, and was cleared by the FDA to start an outpatient-based P2/3 this year. Lots more work to do with this one so my thoughts are that Upamostat's not really in the running for now.
2) Atea & Roche's AT-527. The companies have recently confirmed positive P1 results of this oral anti-viral and therefore it's progressed into P2, with a specific dose being shown to be effective in clearing SARS-CoV-2. Trials are still obviously ongoing with an outpatient trial being done currently in the UK, Ireland, and Bulgaria. I couldn't find any information to support NIHR involvement of the trials in the UK but admittedly it was late when I looked into this one, but AT-527 is some way off from getting the numbers that are needed.
3) Lopinavir/Ritonavir. These are oral protease inhibitors and inhibitors of cytochrome P450 3A, and it was studied in trials against the SARS-CoV-2 virus and as of last year were shown to not be beneficial in hospitalised patients with Covid-19. The Darunavir/Cobicistat treatment, although tolerated well by patients in the study done early last year, didn't show much of a significant result either as far as I know. Both of these are old news and I haven't paid much attention to them since last year.
4) Favipiravir is an RNA polymerase inhibitor that's been used to treat influenza viruses in Japan, and was granted EUA in Japan as well as in some European countries. It's currently in a P2 trial in the U.S., and as far as I can tell the objective of the study is to see whether viral load decreases when given within the first 72 hours after a positive diagnosis of Covid-19 in an outpatient setting. I think Japan have progressed this into P3 while it remains in it's P2 over in the U.S. until it progresses further. Nevertheless, it was apparently shown to be more effective than the Lopinavir/Ritonavir combination.
(Post 1/3)