Much faster and less expensive than developing a new treatment: a French university laboratory hopes to find as soon as possible, among the already existing pharmacopoeia, effective drugs against the new coronavirus which has already killed more than 560 people worldwide.
The laboratory, called VirPath, offers this original strategy within the “REACTing” consortium, set up by the French Institute for Medical Research (Inserm) to deal with health crises like the H5N1 flu, Ebola or Zika.
When most are active on the development of vaccines or test the few antivirals available, VirPath will go to look for drugs used for diseases that a priori have nothing to do with a respiratory infection like 2019-nCoV.
The repositioning of drugs for new anti-infectious therapeutic indications is their specialty. Many know the history of Viagra, originally developed for angina pectoris and which, by accidental clinical observation, has shown other properties.
In Lyon, in the center-east of France, they do not wait for accidental observations to exploit the side effects of certain drugs. So they found that a drug prescribed to fight hypertension was very effective against all strains of influenza.
They are in the phase 2 clinical trial and hope to raise funds for a phase 3 trial, with a view to a marketing authorization (MA) for this new therapeutic indication which could prove to be decisive, notes Manuel Rosa-Calatrava, research director at Inserm and assistant director of the laboratory.
Because the flu still kills, according to the WHO, with between 290,000 and 650,000 deaths worldwide each year.
VirPath has also repositioned other drugs against several respiratory viruses, including MERS-CoV in 2013 and other coronaviruses.
The laboratory is therefore preparing to test the effectiveness of these drugs and that against hypertension on 2019-nCoV.
“We hope to validate these repositioned drugs very quickly within a month, a month and a half in our preclinical models to be able to offer a therapeutic solution,” says Manuel Rosa-Calatrava.
“Quick reaction”
For the past week, this laboratory, a member of the International Center for Infectious Disease Research in Lyon (Ciri), has been mobilized 7 days a week.
The researchers are about to complete step number one, which consists of isolating the 2019-nCoV, duplicating it in order to have a sufficient work bank. The Pasteur Institute in Paris is the first in Europe to have succeeded in doing so in late January.
“We started with nasal swabs from infected patients hospitalized at the Bichat hospital in Paris with everything that a nose could contain,” said one of the laboratory technicians. A real work of biological investigation.
Preserved at -80 degrees, the 2019-nCoV will enrich the laboratory’s library, the oldest preserved virus is H1N1 WSN, isolated in London in 1933.
They are few to be able to work on this new coronavirus and have the keys to “P3”, a level 3 security laboratory. Behind a “Danger, biological risk” sign, they pass through two protective airlocks. In the second, they wear a combination, mask, glasses and two pairs of purple gloves.
But they do not put on spacesuits as in “P4”, where Ebola hemorrhagic viruses are handled in a maximum level of security.
“P3” is under negative pressure, that is to say that the air enters but cannot leave. There is therefore no risk of viruses escaping.
The team of researchers is stimulated by the fact that they feel useful and expected by the general public. “It is rare that there are expectations coming from outside,” slips a scientist.
Repositioning a drug is much faster and less costly than developing a new one and can “allow us to be a rapid reaction force in the face of emerging virus health crises,” says Manuel Rosa-Calatrava.
AFP
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