Novel Antiviral Drug Discovered For COVID-19 Treatment

In patients who do not need hospitalization, a clinical study showed that an experimental antiviral drug can significantly speed up recovery for COVID-19 outpatients. This will be an important intervention for the treatment of infections and help curb community spread, while COVID-19 vaccines are rolled out this year.

The study led by Dr. Jordan Feld, a liver specialist at Toronto Centre for Liver Disease, University Health Network (UHN) is published in the journal Lancet Respiratory Medicine.

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‘COVID-19 outpatients who do not need hospitalization can be treated effectively with peginterferon-lambda which can improve clinical outcomes and curb community spread.’
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Dr Feld, Co-Director of the Schwartz Reisman Liver Research Centre and the R. Phelan Chair in Translational Liver Research at UHN said, “This treatment has large therapeutic potential, especially at this moment as we see aggressive variants of the virus spreading around the globe which are less sensitive to both vaccines and treatment with antibodies.”

According to the study, patients receiving a single injection of peginterferon-lambda were over four times more likely to have cleared the infection within seven days, when compared to a group treated with placebo.

The patients were treated effectively and the virus was cleared quickly and the effect was most pronounced in those with the highest viral levels. There was improvement of respiratory symptoms in the treatment group. The treatment of patients with higher viral levels (above 1 million copies per mL) was more likely to be cleared of infection than treatment with placebo- 79 patients in the treatment arm when compared to 38 percent in the placebo group.

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In those with high viral levels, rapid clearance has many benefits as those cases are associated with more severe disease and a higher risk of transmission to others. In this study, 60 patients were enrolled out of which five went to emergency rooms with deteriorating respiratory symptoms, four were in the placebo group, while only one was in the group which received the actual drug.

Bringing down the virus level quickly reduces the risk of spreading the disease to others and also prevents people from getting worse. This will have an important additional public health impact.

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Interferon-lambda

In response to viral infections, interferon-lambda is a protein produced by the body and it has the ability to activate a number of cellular pathways to kill the invading viruses. Coronavirus that causes COVID-19, prevents the body from producing interferons by which it avoids being killed by the body’s immune system.

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In the cell, treatment with interferon-lambda activates those same virus-killing pathways. As interferon activates many virus-killing pathways, resistance to the new strains of the virus which could be an issue with some therapies, but it is not a concern with interferon-lambda.

Receptors for interferon-lambda are only present in some tissues in the body and found to be very active in the lung, the liver and the intestine, all places where the COVID-19 virus is able to replicate, but it is not active in other places leading to a lot fewer side effects than other interferons.

In the trial, similar side effects were seen in those treated with interferon-lambda and placebo.

Peginterferon-lambda (used in this study) can be given as a single injection under the skin with a tiny needle (like insulin) and is the long-acting version of the drug developed by Eiger BioPharmaceuticals.

Source-Medindia