The Covid-19 pandemic has seen its shares of efforts by the research community to weaken the spread of the virus. Researchers have worked tirelessly to produce vaccines that could help enervate the spread. As much advancement that occurred in vaccine development was noted, the same could not be mentioned in the drug development sector. In most cases drugs that were pre-approved by FDA and repurposed drugs were used successfully in labs to eliminate SARS-CoV-2 but failed to do the same in human clinical trials. Recently, there have been reports on the wonder drug Molnupiravir that has successfully appeared to control the viral spread and has shown promising results in the phase III of clinical trials.
What is Molnupiravir – the wonder drug?
Researchers at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill have been working alongside Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics on Molnupiravir which is an anti-viral drug that acts on the RNA genome of the virus. It has been reported to be highly effective in reducing viral RNA in the clinical trials.
It incorporates certain blocks in the genome of the virus called RNA analogs. Since the blocks are mismatched, this causes deliberate errors in the genome of the virus which are called mutations resulting in faulty viral products. The viral replicates that are produced are too mutated to function efficiently and are killed by the host immune cells. What’s more, unlike other anti-viral drugs that are administered intra-venously, this can be taken orally.
Results based on phase II clinical trials show promising results:
Studies showed that administering 800 mg of the drug orally twice for consecutively five days showed zero infection rate at the end of day 5. This was compared to those administered with a placebo where 11.1% people were still positive. Very mild side effects of headache and insomnia were reported in some patients.
Is there any reason to think that Molnupiravir might act differently on the upcoming viral variants? Researchers at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium say that the drug should work efficiently despite any mutations since it works on the viral genome and incapacitates it. They also say Molnupiravir in combination with other antiviral drugs would be effective on broad range of new variants of SARS-CoV-2 that might emerge in the future.
Molnupiravir in India?
Current drugs used for COVID19 treatment in India include Remdesvir, Tocilizumab and antibiotics such as Azithromycin, Ivermectin are widely used. None of these drugs are specific to SARS-CoV2 which reiterated the need for a specific oral drug. In India, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Cipla, Sun pharmaceuticals along with two other companies have entered into an agreement with Merck to manufacture and supply Molnupiravir to over 100 countries including India. It is currently in Phase III clinical trials and being administered to non-hospitalized patients.
If all works out, Molnupiravir can effectively help patients with mild to moderate symptoms completely recuperate within five days without severe side effects, as many see a ray of light through this wonder drug.
On a side note…. My dad had taken part in the clinical trial of the drug. He was administered the drug for five days and he tested negative on the sixth day. He is completely fine and experienced no side effects.
Sources:
- Fischer, W., Eron, J., Holman, W. et al. (2021). Molnupiravir, an Oral Antiviral Treatment forCOVID19. medRxiv. doi:10.1101/2021.06.17.21258639. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.17.21258639v1
- Kabinger, F., Stiller, C., Schmitzová, J. et al. Mechanism of molnupiravir-induced SARS-CoV-2 mutagenesis. Nat Struct Mol Biol (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41594-021-00651-0
- Rana Abdelnabi, Caroline S Foo, Steven De Jonghe, Piet Maes, Birgit Weynand, Johan Neyts, Molnupiravir Inhibits Replication of the Emerging SARS-CoV-2 Variants of Concern in a Hamster Infection Model, The Journal of Infectious Diseases, 2021; jiab361, https://doi.org/10.1093/infdis/jiab361
- https://www.drreddys.com/media/1000772/press-release-pharma-majors-collaborate-for-clinical-trial-of-molnupiravir.pdf
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