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Developing a direct acting, orally available antiviral agent in a pandemic: the evolution of molnupiravir as a potential treatment for COVID-19
Despite the availability of vaccines, there remains an urgent need for antiviral drugs with potent activity against SARS-CoV-2, the cause of COVID-19. Millions of people are immune-suppressed and may not be able to mount a fully protective immune response after vaccination. There is also an increasi...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Elsevier B.V.
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8277160/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34271264 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.coviro.2021.06.003 |
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author | Painter, George R Natchus, Michael G Cohen, Oren Holman, Wendy Painter, Wendy P |
author_facet | Painter, George R Natchus, Michael G Cohen, Oren Holman, Wendy Painter, Wendy P |
author_sort | Painter, George R |
collection | PubMed |
description | Despite the availability of vaccines, there remains an urgent need for antiviral drugs with potent activity against SARS-CoV-2, the cause of COVID-19. Millions of people are immune-suppressed and may not be able to mount a fully protective immune response after vaccination. There is also an increasingly critical need for a drug to cover emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants, against which existing vaccines may be less effective. Here, we describe the evolution of molnupiravir (EIDD-2801, MK-4482), a broad-spectrum antiviral agent originally designed for the treatment of Alphavirus infections, into a potential drug for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19. When the pandemic began, molnupiravir was in pre-clinical development for the treatment of seasonal influenza. As COVID-19 spread, the timeline for the development program was moved forward significantly, and focus shifted to treatment of coronavirus infections. Real time consultation with regulatory authorities aided in making the acceleration of the program possible. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8277160 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Elsevier B.V. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-82771602021-07-14 Developing a direct acting, orally available antiviral agent in a pandemic: the evolution of molnupiravir as a potential treatment for COVID-19 Painter, George R Natchus, Michael G Cohen, Oren Holman, Wendy Painter, Wendy P Curr Opin Virol Article Despite the availability of vaccines, there remains an urgent need for antiviral drugs with potent activity against SARS-CoV-2, the cause of COVID-19. Millions of people are immune-suppressed and may not be able to mount a fully protective immune response after vaccination. There is also an increasingly critical need for a drug to cover emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants, against which existing vaccines may be less effective. Here, we describe the evolution of molnupiravir (EIDD-2801, MK-4482), a broad-spectrum antiviral agent originally designed for the treatment of Alphavirus infections, into a potential drug for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19. When the pandemic began, molnupiravir was in pre-clinical development for the treatment of seasonal influenza. As COVID-19 spread, the timeline for the development program was moved forward significantly, and focus shifted to treatment of coronavirus infections. Real time consultation with regulatory authorities aided in making the acceleration of the program possible. Elsevier B.V. 2021-10 2021-06-18 /pmc/articles/PMC8277160/ /pubmed/34271264 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.coviro.2021.06.003 Text en © 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active. |
spellingShingle | Article Painter, George R Natchus, Michael G Cohen, Oren Holman, Wendy Painter, Wendy P Developing a direct acting, orally available antiviral agent in a pandemic: the evolution of molnupiravir as a potential treatment for COVID-19 |
title | Developing a direct acting, orally available antiviral agent in a pandemic: the evolution of molnupiravir as a potential treatment for COVID-19 |
title_full | Developing a direct acting, orally available antiviral agent in a pandemic: the evolution of molnupiravir as a potential treatment for COVID-19 |
title_fullStr | Developing a direct acting, orally available antiviral agent in a pandemic: the evolution of molnupiravir as a potential treatment for COVID-19 |
title_full_unstemmed | Developing a direct acting, orally available antiviral agent in a pandemic: the evolution of molnupiravir as a potential treatment for COVID-19 |
title_short | Developing a direct acting, orally available antiviral agent in a pandemic: the evolution of molnupiravir as a potential treatment for COVID-19 |
title_sort | developing a direct acting, orally available antiviral agent in a pandemic: the evolution of molnupiravir as a potential treatment for covid-19 |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8277160/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34271264 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.coviro.2021.06.003 |
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