Several rival companies set to launch antiviral pills for COVID-19
pharmafile | September 29, 2021 | News story | Research and Development |
With Merck and Pfizer preparing to release clinical trial results from its experimental COVID-19 antiviral pills, rivals are lining up with what they hope will prove to be more potent and convenient oral treatments of their own.
Enanta Pharmaceuticals, Pardes Biosciences, Japan’s Shionogi, and Novartis have all designed their own antiviral pills against coronavirus, with the hopes that their treatments can outstrip rivals.
A recent Jefferies & Co estimate set the annual sales of an effective and convenient COVID-19 treatment at $10 billion, and many in pharma believe that a pill taken orally is the way forward for such a treatment.
Infectious disease experts have stressed that preventing COVID-19 through wide use of vaccines remains the best way to control the pandemic. But, they also said the disease is here to stay and more convenient treatments are needed.
Dr Robert Schooley, an infectious diseases professor at UC San Diego School of Medicine, said: “We need to have oral alternatives for suppression of this virus. We have people who aren’t vaccinated getting sick, people whose vaccine protection is waning, and people who can’t get vaccinated”.
Pfizer and Merck, alongside partners Atea Pharmaceuticals and Roche, have all said they could seek emergency approval for their COVID-19 antiviral pills this year.
Rivals are at least a year behind, with Pardes having only started early-stage trials last month. Shionogi plans to start large-scale clinical trials by year-end, Enanta aims to start human trials early next year, and Novartis is still testing its pill in animals.
Antivirals are complex to develop because they must target the virus after it is already replicating inside human cells without damaging healthy cells. They also need to be given early to be most effective.
Currently, intravenous and injected antibodies are the only approved treatments for non-hospitalised COVID-19 patients.
Several classes of antiviral drugs currently are being explored. Polymerase inhibitors such as Atea’s drug – first developed for hepatitis C – aim to disrupt the ability of the coronavirus to make copies of itself. There are also protease inhibitors, like Pfizer’s pill, which are designed to block an enzyme the virus needs in order to multiply earlier in its lifecycle.
Merck’s molnupiravir, developed with Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, was at one point envisioned as a flu drug and works by introducing errors into the genetic code of the virus.
Jay Grobler, who oversees infectious disease and vaccines at Merck, said: “The broad spectrum activity of molnupiravir against RNA viruses, including other respiratory viruses, suggests that it should be a durable, useful molecule”.
Kat Jenkins
