A drug used for more than a decade to treat cancer could cure people with Covid-19, according to a new study.
The drug, called pralatrexate, is a drug for chemotherapy that was originally developed to treat lymphomas – tumors that come from the glands.
Chinese researchers have found that pralatrexate exceeds remdesivir, which is currently the main antiviral drug used to treat patients with Covid-19.
Pralatrexate was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2009 for terminally ill patients, despite its toxicity.
Side effects of pralatrexate include fatigue, nausea and mucositis – inflammation and ulceration of the mucous membranes that cover the digestive tract.
However, according to the recovery of pralatrexate in a way that eliminates its side effects has a lot of potential, according to researchers.
Color scanning electron micrograph of an apoptotic cell (pink) heavily infected with SARS-COV-2 virus particles (green), isolated from a patient sample. pralatrexate, a chemotherapy drug originally developed to treat lymphoma, could be reused to treat Covid-19
“Identifying effective drugs that can treat Covid-19 is important and urgent, especially approved drugs that can be tested immediately in clinical trials,” said the study’s authors, led by Dr. Haiping Zhang of Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, China.
Our study found that pralatrexate is able to strongly inhibit SARS-CoV-2 replication with stronger inhibitory activity than remdesivir under the same experimental conditions.
Following the global outbreak of Covid-19, researchers were inspired by the idea of reusing existing drugs that were originally developed to treat other conditions.
Remdesivir was originally developed to treat hepatitis C and then reused as a potential treatment for Ebola. Due to the similarity of the structures of these viruses to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, experts hoped it could help fight the current pandemic.
Artificial intelligence can help identify these drugs by simulating how different drugs would interact with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.
To help virtual screening of existing drugs, Zhang and colleagues combined several computational techniques that simulate drug-virus interactions.
They used this hybrid approach to examine 1,906 existing drugs for their potential ability to inhibit SARS-CoV-2 replication by targeting a viral protein called RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRP).
RdRP is an essential protein encoded in the genome of all RNA-containing viruses, such as SARS-CoV-2.
The new screening approach identified four promising drugs, which were then tested against SARS-CoV-2 in laboratory experiments.
Two of the drugs, pralatrexate and azithromycin, successfully inhibited the replication of the virus.
Other laboratory experiments have shown that pralatrexate inhibits viral replication more strongly than remdesivir, suggesting that the former may be recovered for Covid.
However, this chemotherapy drug can cause significant side effects and, as it is used in people with terminal lymphoma, immediate use for patients with Covid-19 is not guaranteed.
Despite this, the findings support the use of the new screening strategy to identify drugs that could be changed, according to the team.
“We have demonstrated the value of our new hybrid approach that combines deep learning technologies with more traditional simulations of molecular dynamics,” said Dr. Zhang.
The researchers, who have published their work in PLOS Computational Biology, are now developing additional computational methods to generate new molecular structures that could be developed in new drugs to treat Covid-19.
The study follows some general skepticism about the effectiveness of remdesivir, which was initially developed to treat hepatitis C and then redefined as a potential treatment for Ebola.
After disappointing results in treating Ebola in 2014, remdesivir was tested in the early stages of this year’s pandemic.
However, there is no consensus on its effectiveness, with clinical trials showing mixed results.
The NHS has approved it for use in patients with Covid-19 in hopes that it can help, but they are already being forced to ration the drug, which costs £ 2,400 a course ($ 3,120).
In November, the World Health Organization (WHO) said doctors should not treat coronavirus patients with remdesivir “no matter how sick they are.”
Officials at the time said there was “no evidence” that it would increase people’s chances of surviving the disease or prevent them from getting sick enough to need mechanical ventilation.
They also warned that there is a “potential for serious harm” when using the experimental drug Ebola, as it can cause kidney and liver damage in some patients.
However, in December, a team of British experts reported in Nature Communications that remdesivir could be a highly effective Covid-19 treatment “for some patients”.
It helped heal a 31-year-old patient who suffered a rare reaction to the disease due to a genetic disorder called XLA, which prevented him from producing antibodies to fight infections.
“There have been several studies that support or question the effectiveness of remdesivir, but some of those performed during the first wave of infection may not be optimal for evaluating its antiviral properties,” said study author Dr. James Thaventhiran. from the MRC Toxicology Unit at the University of Cambridge. .