If you survived Covid-19, donate blood for Vaccine research.

THE CORONA COVID-19 DISEASE WITH THE SARS-CoV-2 VIRUS.

What I understand so far...
1. It is a powerful and deadly virus for people with weak immune systems.
2. People over Seventy years of age are the most vulnerable.
3. A medical respirator is a necessary life-saver for those infected by the virus.
4. Every hospital in Canada may need a minimum of five hundred medical respirators and they should be prioritized by the Canadian government and then quickly manufactured and dispensed throughout Canada before the virus expands into the general population.
5. The steps we as individuals need to take include refraining from joining groups over Ten people and also, cleaning our hands with a strong hand soap. Look at the bottom of this page for a cheap but powerful hand cleanser.
6. If you must go to a shopping center for groceries, wear gloves. If there are registered cases of the virus in your area, I suggest wearing a surgical mask if available but if not, a construction mask may be the next best thing.
7. If possible, get yourself tested for the virus and if a medical authority quarantines you, obey without question.
8. If you have recovered from the SARS-CoV-2 virus and you feel strong enough, donate a litre of your blood. Somewhere around the world a smart scientist may use your plasma to create a Vaccine against Covid-19.
I will visit a laboratory to understand more about the Covid-19 disease containing the SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes the disease, then I will report back.
Good luck!
Signed: N.J. Raglione.

Hello Gentle People. Here is more information on the Covid-19 epidemic.
" Research shows that the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing the COVID-19 DISEASE EPIDEMIC is spread through close contact with an infected person and it is most contagious before and during the first week of symptoms.
Infection can occur in two ways, droplet and contact.
Droplets' mean respiratory droplets produced by an infected person's sneeze or cough. These can travel up to 6 feet or (1.8 meters). A person becomes infected when droplets from a cough or sneeze directly enter the body through the eyes, mouth, or nose.
Contact means touching a person directly or object directly, such as door handles that have droplets on them from an infected person's cough or sneeze. Unwashed hands contaminated with COVID-19 can introduce the virus to your body when you touch your eyes, mouth or nose. Washing your hands often and avoiding touching your face are two very important ways to help prevent the spread of COVID-19"
SUNNYBROOK...HEALTH SCIENCES CENTRE.
=======
Hello again!
Here is a quick and easy way to disinfect your hands. Fill a plastic pump bottle with Vinegar and squirt in some dish soap. Except for the pump bottle which you can buy at any Dollar store, the Vinegar and dish soap are handy kitchen products usually found in most homes. You will be surprised how well this works not only cleaning your hands but your dishes and almost anything you want to keep clean around the house...and it is cheap to make.
Now for some potential life saving good news! During the early stage of the disease, you can strengthen your body and help your lungs fight the infection by taking Vitamin B3 tablets and also by eating foods containing B3. They won't cure the infection but might help save your energy and keep you alive during your immune system's fight against the SARScoV2. 
What foods are high in b3? Good sources of vitamin B3, also known as Niacin, include yeast, meat, poultry, redfish (e.g., tuna, salmon), cereals, legumes, and seeds. Milk, green leafy vegetables, coffee, and tea also provide some niacin.
Don't forget to call an ambulance if the disease climbs up to level 2 and things get rough!

Keep clean and good luck in your struggle against the Covid-19 epidemic. N.J. Raglione. Dir. The World Friendly Peace and Ecology Movement.
----------------------------
POTENTIAL CURES FOR COVID-19
-----------------------------------------------
THE SHORT VERSION: REPURPOSING DRUGS.
Three existing anti-virus drugs may have a chance against the Covid-19 virus. They are:
1. REMDESIVIR... A viral inhibitor. It seems to be the best so far and is undergoing testing in China.
2. ACE2... A human protein inhibitor which may decoy the Covid virus by glomming on to the virus and preventing it from getting into cells. Adding extra ACE2 may help protect the existing ACE2 in protecting the cells which cover the lungs.
3. CHLOROQUINE...It is an anti-malaria drug that inhibits the ability of the new virus to infect and grow in Monkey cells. Combining Chloroquine with Remdesivir is also under testing in China.
4. The H.I.V. drug Kaletra, also called Aluvia, is a combination of two Protease inhibitors: Lopinavir and Ritonavir. Kaletra is being tested in China.
5. High doses of Lopinavir combined with Ritonavir worked to cure a 70-year-old lady in Bankok.

=================================================================
THE PRECISE VERSION:
"Repurposed drugs may help scientists fight the new coronavirus.
Work on similar viruses is giving researchers clues to develop drugs against the disease.
A patient who recovered from COVID-19 is discharged from a Wuhan hospital on February 18. His plasma may help to create a vaccine against the Coronavirus: Covid-19.

STR/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Share this on:
Facebook
Twitter
Pocket
Reddit
Print
By Tina Hesman Saey

MARCH 10, 2020 AT 7:00 AM

As the new coronavirus makes its way around the world, doctors and researchers are searching for drugs to treat the ill and stop the spread of the disease, which has already killed more than 3,800 people since its introduction in Wuhan, China, in December.

The culprit virus is in the same family as the coronaviruses that caused two other outbreaks, severe acute respiratory syndrome, and the Middle East respiratory syndrome. But the new coronavirus may be more infectious. In early March, the number of confirmed cases of the new disease, called COVID-19, had exceeded 100,000, far surpassing the more than 10,600 combined total cases of SARS and MERS.

Health officials are mainly relying on quarantines to try to contain the virus’ spread. Such low-tech public health measures were effective at stopping SARS in 2004, Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said January 29 in Arlington, Va., at the annual American Society for Microbiology’s Biothreats meeting.

But stopping the new virus may require a more aggressive approach. In China alone, about 300 clinical trials are in the works to treat sick patients with standard antiviral therapies, such as interferons, as well as stem cells, traditional Chinese medicines including acupuncture, and blood plasma from people who have already recovered from the virus.

Sign Up For the Latest from SCIENCE NEWS.
Headlines and summaries of the latest Science News articles can be delivered to your inbox

E-mail*
human4usbillions@gmail.com
GO
Researchers are not stopping there. They also are working to develop drugs to treat infections and vaccines to prevent them (SN: 3/14/20, p. 6). But creating therapies against new diseases often takes years, if not decades. With this new coronavirus, now known as SARS-CoV-2, nobody wants to wait that long. Thanks to their experience developing treatments against the MERS coronavirus, as well as other diseases, such as HIV, hepatitis C, influenza, Ebola and malaria, researchers are moving quickly to see what they can borrow to help patients sooner.

“Repurposing drugs is absolutely the best thing that could happen right now.”

Karla Satchell, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
Finding new uses for old drugs is a good strategy, especially when racing to fight a fast-moving disease for which there is no treatment, says Karla Satchell, a microbiologist, an immunologist at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

“Repurposing drugs is absolutely the best thing that could happen right now,” Satchell says. Potentially, drugs that combat HIV or hepatitis C might be able to put the new coronavirus in check, too. “Those drugs exist. They’ve been produced. They’ve been tested in patients,” she says. Although these drugs aren’t approved to treat the new coronavirus disease, they’re a great place to start. One of the most promising candidates, however, hasn’t yet been approved for any disease.

Early focus
Scientists have been quick to reveal the new corona­virus’ secrets. When SARS emerged in 2002, researchers took about five months to get a complete picture of the virus’s genetic makeup, or genome. With the new virus, Chinese health officials first reported a cluster of mysterious pneumonia cases in Wuhan to the World Health Organization on December 31. By January 10, the new coronavirus’s full genome was made available to researchers worldwide in public databases.

A virus’s genome is one of the most valuable tools scientists have for understanding where the pathogen came from, how it works and how to fight it. The first thing that coronaviruses have in common is that their genetic material is RNA, a chemical cousin to DNA.

Researchers immediately began comparing the new coronavirus’s genome with SARS and MERS viruses and other RNA viruses to determine whether drugs developed to combat those disease-­causing organisms would work against the new threat. As a result, some potential Achilles’ heels of SARS-CoV-2 have already come to light.

One target is the virus’s main protein-cutting enzyme, called M protease. RNA viruses often make one long string of proteins that later get cut into individual proteins to form various parts of the virus. In the new coronavirus, the M protease is one of 16 proteins that are linked like beads on a string, says Stephen Burley, an oncologist and structural biologist at Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J.


DAVID S. GOODSELL/RCSB PROTEIN DATA BANK
M protease (model is shown) is a key enzyme for the new corona­virus’ survival and may be an Achilles’ heel. Drugs (blue) might be able to nestle into the enzyme and stop viral replication.
The virus can mature and infect new cells only if M protease can snip the string of proteins free, he says. Stop the protease from cutting and the virus can’t reproduce or replicate.

Existing drugs might be able to stop the virus’s M protease, two research groups proposed online January 29 at bioRxiv.org. One group suggested four drugs, including one used to treat hepatitis C and two aimed at HIV. A second group named 10 candidates, including an anti-nausea medication, an antifungal drug, and some cancer-fighting drugs.

HIV and hepatitis C are both RNA viruses that need a protease to cut proteins free from long chains. Drugs that inhibit those proteases can reduce levels of HIV and hepatitis C viruses to undetectable. Some of those drugs are now being tested against the new coronavirus in clinical trials in China.

The HIV drug Kaletra, also called Aluvia, is a combination of two protease inhibitors, lopinavir, and ritonavir. Kaletra’s maker, the global pharmaceutical company AbbVie, announced on January 26 that it is donating the drug to be tested in COVID-19 patients in China. Kaletra will be tested alone or in combination with other drugs. For instance, researchers may combine Kaletra with Arbidol, a drug that prevents some viruses from fusing with and infecting human cells. Arbidol may be tested on its own as well.

See all our coverage of the 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak
But the HIV drugs may not work against the new virus because of two differences in the proteases. The coronavirus protease cuts proteins in different spots than does the HIV protease say: Guangdi Li of the Xiangya School of Public Health of Central South University in Changsha, China, and Erik De Clercq, a pioneer in HIV therapy at KU Leuven in Belgium. Secondly, the HIV drugs were designed to fit a pocket in HIV’s protease that doesn’t exist in the new coronavirus’s protease, the researchers reported February 10 in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery.

Yet a few anecdotal accounts suggest the HIV drugs may help people with COVID-19 recover. Doctors at Rajavithi Hospital in Bangkok reported in a news briefing February 2 that they had treated a severely ill 70-year-old woman with high doses of a combination of lopinavir and ritonavir and the anti-influenza drug oseltamivir, which is sold as Tamiflu. Within 48 hours of treatment, the woman tested negative for the virus.

Her recovery may be due more to the HIV drugs than to oseltamivir. In 124 patients treated with oseltamivir at Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, “no effective outcomes were observed,” doctors reported on February 7 in JAMA. Clinical trials in which these drugs are given to more people in carefully controlled conditions are needed to determine what to make of those isolated reports.

Viral weak spots
Researchers may be able to exploit a second weakness in the virus: its copying process, specifically the enzymes known as RNA-dependent RNA polymerases that the virus uses to make copies of its RNA. “Those enzymes are absolutely essential,” says Mark Denison, an evolutionary biologist at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville. If the enzyme doesn’t work, “you can’t make new virus.”

Denison and colleagues have been testing molecules that muck with the copying machinery of RNA viruses. The molecules mimic the nucleotides that RNA polymerases string together to make viral genomes. Researchers have tested chemically altered versions of two RNA nucleotides — adenosine and cytidine — against a wide variety of RNA viruses in test tubes and in animals. The molecules “get incorporated into the viral RNA and either stop it from growing or they damage it by introducing mutations,” Denison says.

One of the molecules that researchers are most excited about is an experimental drug called Remdesivir. The drug is being tested in people with COVID-19 because it can stop the MERS virus in the lab and in animal studies. The drug has also been used in patients with Ebola, another RNA virus.

Remdesivir has been given to hundreds of people infected with Ebola, without causing serious side effects, but the drug hasn’t been as effective as scientists had hoped, virologist Timothy Sheahan of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said January 29 at the Biothreats meeting. In a clinical trial in Congo, for example, about 53 percent of Ebola patients treated with remdesivir died, researchers reported November 27 in the New England Journal of Medicine. That’s better than the 66 percent of infected people killed in the ongoing Ebola outbreak, but other drugs in the trial were more effective.

Repurposed drugs that might treat COVID-19
Several drugs are in testing to target various parts of the new coronavirus.

Remdesivir
Designed to treat: RNA viruses (MERS, Ebola)
Evidence for: Lab tests against the COVID-19 virus; animal tests against MERS; tests in people with Ebola
Evidence against: Not as helpful as other drugs against Ebola
Lopinavir/ritonavir
Designed to treat: HIV
Evidence for: HIV and the new virus have a similar enzyme; anecdotal evidence in COVID-19 patients
Evidence against: The enzymes work differently; the new virus doesn’t have the pocket that the HIV drugs fit into to block the enzyme
Chloroquine
Designed to treat: Malaria
Evidence for: Lab tests against COVID-19
Evidence against: No data
APN01 (ACE2 protein decoy)
Designed to treat: SARS
Evidence for: Tests in animals infected with other viruses; tests in people with lung damage
Evidence against: It didn’t completely protect people with acute respiratory distress syndrome
Several tests of Remdesivir in lab animals infected with MERS have researchers still hopeful when it comes to the new coronavirus. In studies in both rhesus macaques and mice, Remdesivir protected animals from lung damage whether the drug was given before or after infection. Molecular pathologist Emmie de Wit of NIAID’s Laboratory of Virology in Hamilton, Mont., and colleagues reported the monkey results February 13 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Remdesivir appears to be one of the most promising antiviral treatments tested in a nonhuman primate model to date,” the team wrote. The results also suggest Remdesivir given before infection might help protect health care workers and family members of infected people from getting severe forms of the disease, Sheahan says.

Denison, Sheahan, and colleagues tested Remdesivir on infected human lung cells in the lab and in mice infected with MERS. Remdesivir was more potent at stopping the MERS virus than HIV drugs and interferon-beta, the researchers reported January 10 in Nature Communications.

But the question is still open about whether Remdesivir can stop the new coronavirus.

In lab tests, it can. Both Remdesivir and the antimalaria drug chloroquine inhibited the new virus’s ability to infect and grow in monkey cells, virologist Manli Wang of the Wuhan Institute of Virology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and colleagues reported February 4 in Cell Research. Remdesivir also stopped the virus from growing in human cells. Chloroquine can block infections by interfering with the ability of some viruses — including coronaviruses — to enter cells. Wang and colleagues found that the drug could also limit growth of the new coronavirus if given after entry. Chloroquine also may help the immune system fight the virus without the kind of over­reaction that can lead to organ failure, the researchers propose.

In China, Remdesivir is already being tested in patients. And NIAID announced February 25 that it had launched a clinical trial of Remdesivir at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. The first enrolled patient was an American evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan that had been quarantined in February because of a COVID-19 outbreak.

Ultimately, nearly 400 sick people at 50 centers around the world will participate in the NIAID trial, which will compare "Remdesivir" with a placebo. The trial may be stopped or altered to add other drugs depending on results from the first 100 or so patients, says Andre Kalil, an infectious disease physician at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

Researchers considered many potential therapies, but based on results from the animal and lab studies, “remdesivir seemed to be the one that was more promising,” Kalil says.

man donating plasma
This man in Wuhan, China, recovered from COVID-19 and is donating plasma for critically ill patients. The plasma contains antibodies that may fight the virus.
BARCROFT MEDIA/GETTY IMAGES
In the early patient studies, figuring out when to give Remdesivir to patients might not be easy, Sheahan says. Often drugs are tested on the sickest patients. For example, those in the NIAID trial must have pneumonia to participate. By the time someone lands in the intensive care unit with COVID-19, it may be too late for Remdesivir to combat the virus, Sheahan says. It may turn out that the drug works best earlier in the disease, before viral replication peaks.

“We don’t know because it hasn’t really been evaluated in people how Remdesivir will work, or if it will work at all,” Sheahan cautions.

The drug seems to have helped a 35-year-old man in Snohomish County, Wash., researchers reported January 31 in the New England Journal of Medicine. The man had the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the United States. He developed pneumonia, and doctors treated him with intravenous Remdesivir. By the next day, he was feeling better and was taken off supplemental oxygen.

That’s just one case, and the company that makes Remdesivir has urged caution. “Remdesivir is not yet licensed or approved anywhere globally and has not been demonstrated to be safe or effective for any use,” the drug’s maker, biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, headquartered in Foster City, Calif., said in a statement on January 31.

Too many trials of less-promising candidates are being offered. “We have got to start prioritizing enrollment into those things that may save lives and save them faster.”

Bruce Aylward, WHO assistant director-general
But global health officials are eager to see the drug tested in people. “There’s only one drug right now that we think may have real efficacy, and that’s remdesivir,” WHO’s assistant director-general Bruce Aylward said during a news briefing on February 24. But researchers in China are having trouble recruiting patients into remdesivir studies, partly because the number of cases has been waning and partly because too many trials of less-promising candidates are being offered. “We have got to start prioritizing enrollment into those things that may save lives and save them faster,” Aylward said.

Decoy defense
Another strategy for combating COVID-19 involves distracting the virus with decoys. Like the SARS virus, the new virus enters human cells by latching on to a protein called ACE2. The protein studs the surface of cells in the lungs and many other organs. A protein on the surface of the new virus binds to ACE2 10 to 20 times as tightly as the SARS protein does.

Researchers at Vienna-based Apeiron Biologics announced February 26 that they would use human ACE2 protein in a clinical trial against the new coronavirus. When released into the body, the extra ACE2 acts as a decoy, glomming on to the virus, preventing it from getting into cells.

ACE2 isn’t just a virus’s doorway to infection. Normally, it helps protect the lungs against damage, says Josef Penninger, an immunologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and a cofounder of Apeiron. Penninger and colleagues reported the protein’s protective qualities, based on studies with mice, in Nature in 2005.

During a viral infection, the protein is drawn away from the cell surface and can’t offer protection. Penninger thinks that adding in extra ACE2 may help shield the lungs from damage caused by the virus and by immune system overreactions. The protein is also made in many other organs. Penninger and colleagues are testing whether the new virus can enter other tissues, which might be how the virus leads to multiple organ failures in severely ill people.

The decoy protein drug, called APN01, has already been through Phase I and Phase II clinical testing. “We know it’s safe,” Penninger says. Now researchers just need to determine whether it works.

Persistent problem solving
No one knows whether any of these approaches can help stem the spread of COVID-19.

“Right now, we need lots of people working with lots of ideas.”

Karla Satchell
“Right now, we need lots of people working with lots of ideas,” Satchell says. Similarities between the viruses that cause SARS and COVID-19 may mean that some drugs could work against both. “There is a hope that several small molecules that were identified as inhibitors of the SARS protease would represent reasonable starting points for trying to make a drug for the 2019 coronavirus,” Burley says.

“The open question is, can you produce a drug that is both safe and effective quickly enough to have an impact?” SARS was stopped by traditional infection-control measures in 2004, before any virus-fighting drugs made it through the development pipeline.

But had a decision been made then to spend $1 billion to make a safe and effective drug against SARS, Burley says, such a drug might be working now against the new coronavirus, eliminating the need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to contain this new infection.

An investment in SARS would not have paid off for people with MERS, which is still a danger in the Middle East. The MERS virus is too different from SARS at the RNA level for SARS drugs to work against it.

But a future coronavirus might emerge that is similar enough to SARS and SARS-CoV-2 to be worth the cost, Burley says. Even if the current outbreak dwindles and disappears, he says, governments and companies should keep investing in drugs that can stop coronaviruses.

“I’m quite certain that the economic impact of the epidemic is going to run into the hundreds of billions,” he says. “So you would only need a 1 percent chance of something that was treatable with the drug to show up in the future to have made a good investment.”


Trustworthy journalism comes at a price.
Scientists and journalists share a core belief in questioning, observing and verifying to reach the truth. Science News reports on crucial research and discovery across science disciplines. We need your financial support to make it happen – every contribution makes a difference.

SUPPORT SCIENCE NEWS
Questions or comments on this article? E-mail us at feedback@sciencenews.org

CITATIONS
AbbVie Inc. AbbVie Statement on Coronavirus and lopinavir/ritonavir. January 27, 2020.

World Health Organization. Global research on coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

Y. Li et al. Therapeutic drugs targeting 2019-nCoV main protease by high-throughput screening. bioRxiv.org. January 29, 2020. doi:10.1101/2020.01.28.922922.

X. Liu and X.-J. Wang. Potential inhibitors for 2019-nCoV coronavirus M protease from clinically approved medicines. bioRxiv.org. January 29, 2020. doi:10.1101/2020.01.29.924100

A. Wu et al. Genome composition and divergence of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) originating in China. Cell Host & Microbe. Published online February 7, 2020. doi:10.1016/j.chom.2020.02.001

S. Mulangu et al. A randomized, controlled trial of Ebola virus disease therapeutics. New England Journal of Medicine. Published on November 27, 2019. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1910993

T.P. Sheahan et al. Comparative therapeutic efficacy of Remdesivir and combination lopinavir, ritonavir, and Interferon-beta against MERS-CoV. Nature Communications. Published online January 10, 2020. doi:10.1038/s41467-019-13940-6.

M. Wang et al. Remdesivir and chloroquine effectively inhibit the recently emerged novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in vitro. Cell Reports. Published online February 4, 2020. doi:10.1038/s41422-020-0282-0.

E. de Wit et al. Prophylactic and therapeutic Remdesivir (GS-5734) treatment in the rhesus macaque model of MERS-CoV infection. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Published online February 13, 2020. doi:10.1073/pnas.1922083117.

Gilead Sciences. Gilead Sciences' statement on the company’s ongoing response to the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). January 31, 2020.

M.L. Holshue et al. First case of 2019 novel coronavirus in the United States. New England Journal of Medicine. Published online January 31, 2020. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa2001191.

D. Wang et al. Clinical characteristics of 138 hospitalized patients with 2019 novel coronavirus–infected pneumonia in Wuhan, China. JAMA. Published online February 7, 2020. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.1585.

G. Li and E. de Clercq. Therapeutic options for the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). Nature Reviews Drug Discovery. Published online February 10, 2020. doi:10.1038/d41573-020-00016-0.

Y. Imai et al. Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 protects from severe acute lung failure. Nature. Vol. 436, July 7, 2005, p. 112. doi: 10.1038/nature03712

Tina Hesman Saey
About Tina Hesman Saey
E-mail
Twitter
Tina Hesman Saey is the senior staff writer and reports on molecular biology. She has a Ph.D. in molecular genetics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master’s degree in science journalism from Boston University.

Related Stories
A woman who may have 2019-nCoV
HEALTH & MEDICINE
Your most pressing questions about the new Coronavirus answered
By Science News StaffJanuary 29, 2020
vet holding a dog
HEALTH & MEDICINE
A dog in Hong Kong has a low-level infection of the new coronavirus
By Erin Garcia de JesusMarch 5, 2020
2019-nCoV transmission electron micrograph
HEALTH & MEDICINE
How the new coronavirus stacks up against SARS and MERS
By Tina Hesman SaeyJanuary 24, 2020
More Stories from Science News on Health & Medicine


hydroxyapatite and amelotin deposits
HEALTH & MEDICINE
A tooth-enamel protein is found in eyes with a common form of macular degeneration
By Alex Fox4 hours ago
Wuhan Red Cross Hospital
HEALTH & MEDICINE
Why some heart patients may be especially vulnerable to COVID-19
By Aimee CunninghamMarch 20, 2020
young adults at Pompano Beach
HEALTH & MEDICINE
Young adults can face severe cases of COVID-19, too
By Erin Garcia de JesusMarch 19, 2020

HEALTH & MEDICINE
HIV drugs didn’t work as a coronavirus treatment in a clinical trial
By Tina Hesman SaeyMarch 19, 2020
kids washing their hands
HEALTH & MEDICINE
How parents and kids can stay safe and sane during the coronavirus pandemic
By Laura SandersMarch 19, 2020
Multimammate rats
HEALTH & MEDICINE
50 years ago, scientists were trying to get a grip on Lassa fever
By Cassie MartinMarch 19, 2020
Pedestrians in Wuhan
HEALTH & MEDICINE
People who didn’t know they had COVID-19 drove its spread in China
By Aimee CunninghamMarch 17, 2020
microscope image of a coronavirus
HEALTH & MEDICINE
Coronavirus is most contagious before and during the first week of symptoms
By Tina Hesman SaeyMarch 13, 2020
Items 1 through 1 of 8
From the Nature IndexPAID CONTENT
Science News
Science News was founded in 1921 as an independent, nonprofit source of accurate information on the latest news of science, medicine, and technology. Today, our mission remains the same: to empower people to evaluate the news and the world around them. It is published by the Society for Science & the Public, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) membership organization dedicated to public engagement in scientific research and education.

Science News for Students
Science News in High Schools
SUBSCRIBER SERVICES
Subscribe
Renew
Give a Gift Subscription
Follow Science News on Facebook
Follow Science News on Twitter
Follow Science News via RSS
Follow Science News on Instagram
MORE INFORMATION
FAQ
Rights & Permissions
Advertise
SOCIETY FOR SCIENCE & THE PUBLIC
About the Society
Donate
Careers
© Society for Science & the Public 2000–2020. All rights reserved.

1719 N Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036
202.785.2255
Terms of Service Privacy Policy


Pilot clinical trial in China to test UBC researcher’s findings as a targeted therapy for COVID-19
February 25, 2020
APN01 — a drug made by Apeiron Biologics and developed based on the work of UBC’s Josef Penninger — already shown to block viral spread in SARS
A UBC Faculty of Medicine researcher is part of an international team working with a biotechnology company on a pilot clinical trial of a potential new treatment for patients with severe coronavirus infections in China.

Dr. Josef Penninger, director of UBC’s Life Sciences Institute and Canada 150 Chair in Functional Genetics, is working closely with Vienna-based APEIRON Biologics AG on a randomized, dual-arm trial that will treat 24 patients for seven days to determine whether APN01 treatment improves outcomes in patients with severe SARS-CoV-2 infection, the virus that causes COVID-19 disease.

APN01, a drug candidate of APEIRON, is based on previous work in the early 2000s, when Penninger, together with Drs. Arthur Slutsky (University of Toronto) and Chengyu Jiang (Peking Medical Union College), discovered that a protein called ACE2 was the critical receptor for the SARS virus and also protected the lung.


Dr. Josef Penninger

“As a result of SARS revealing its secrets of how it damages the lung, it has also shown us how to develop new medicines to treat other diseases,” says Penninger, a professor in the department of medical genetics. “Now, it turns out that the SARS-CoV-2 virus also uses ACE2 to infect cells. So ACE2 is the rational and targeted therapy for the new epidemic. First, APN01 keeps the virus from infecting cells, and second, it should prevent lung failure and multiple organ complications, the source of most of the mortality we are seeing with COVID-19.”

During the trial, which will begin shortly in China, researchers will assess participants to determine if APN01 reduces the viral load of SARS-CoV-2 virus, as well as the number of days patients endure fever. Data from the trial will be evaluated to determine if there is a need for an additional clinical trial in a larger number of patients.

An international team of Canadian, Chinese, and European experts, including Penninger, co-founder of APEIRON and the APEIRON team, Dr. Liqun Zhang and team of Angalpharma Co., Ltd (Suzhou, China), are coordinating the Chinese clinical trial with the support of dMed Pharmaceutical Co., a CRO team based in China. Drs. Haibo Zhang and Arthur Slutsky at St. Michaels Hospital in Toronto will determine if APN01 improves severe disease of the new coronavirus outbreak.

The trial in China is being led by Dr. Yimin Li, the ICU director who fought the 2003 SARS outbreak Guangdong Province, and Dr. Nanshan Zhong, the Chair of the National COVID-19 Commission in China.

Contact Information
Communications
UBC Faculty of Medicine
Email: communications.med@ubc.ca
Office: 604.822.2421