COVID-19 epidemic infected more than 100 million people in the world till now , which has had a huge impact on human activities. The currently approved antiviral drugs are all administered by injection such as antibodies and remdesivir. There is still no oral Anti Corona Virus Drugs approved on the market.
There are several small molecule oral antiviral drug candidates in the clinical research stage around the world, which might play an important role in fighting COVID-19 in the future.
Molnupiravir, developed by Ridgeback Biotherapeutics and Merck is an experimental antiviral drug which is orally active and was developed for the treatment of influenza. A clinical research shows that Molnupiravir is the first oral, direct-acting antiviral shown to be highly effective at reducing nasopharyngeal SARS-CoV-2 infectious virus and viral RNA and has a favorable safety and tolerability profile. The US Department of Health and Human Services are interested in this drug also and committed to buy $1.2 billion worth of molnupiravir from Merck if it receives FDA approval.
AT-527, developed by Roche and Atea, is an oral, direct-acting antiviral drug candidate.A clinical research shows that This suggests that AT-527 may be an effective treatment option for COVID-19. And a recent study show that AT-527 inhibits SARS-CoV-2 through unique dual mechanisms targeting both RNA dependent RNA polymerase (RdRP) and the nidovirus RdRp-associated nucleotidyltransferase (NiRAN) of viral non-structural protein (nsp12) polymerase, which is essential for viral RNA replication and transcription. It is suggested that AT-517 can not only be used as an oral therapy to treat hospitalized COVID-19 patients, but also be used as preventive treatment after exposure.
Proxalutamide, a nonsteroidal antiandrogen (NSAA) developed by Suzhou Kintor Pharmaceuticals for the potential treatment of COVID-19. Procramide has previously obtained positive results in a multi-center, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled Phase III clinical trial conducted in Brazil. The data shows that Prokalutamide reduces the risk of death in severely ill patients with new coronary disease by 92%, reduces the risk of new ventilator use by 92%, and shortens the length of hospital stay by 9 days. This shows that procrulamide has a certain therapeutic effect for patients with severe COVID-19 disease. The latest announcement shows that the Paraguayan Ministry of Public Health and Social Welfare (MSPBS) has recently officially granted an emergency use authorization (EUA) for procluamide for the treatment of COVID-19 (COVID-19) inpatients in the MSPBS hospital system.
Oral antiviral therapy undoubtedly provides a convenient treatment option. Other molecular such as PF-07321332 by Pfizer are at clinical trial phase also. Hope one of these can play an important role in fighting COVID-19 in the future.