UAB-designed drug given to coronavirus patients, could alleviate symptoms: Health officials

Medicine designed in Alabama to fight Ebola may offer some effective remedies in combating the coronavirus, federal health officials announced.

No firm answers will be available until next month, but Remdesivir, a drug Gilead Pharmaceuticals developed through research at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, may alleviate some of the flu-like symptoms coronavirus causes, according Dr. Francis Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health who was visiting UAB Friday.

Dr. Collins was careful to note the public should not consider the announcement some sort of silver bullet, and that “realistically, we are a year away,” from finding a vaccine for the coronavirus that has now infected more than 100,000 worldwide.

Remdesivir has been administered to coronavirus patients in China as well as in Nebraska, where some of the passengers from the Diamond Princess cruise ship were quarantined after returning to the United States, but studies on human patients won’t be completed until April. In lab tests, the medicine has shown promise for fighting infections from other coronaviruses like SARS and MERS.

“We urgently need a safe and effective treatment for COVID-19,” said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “Although Remdesivir has been administered to some patients with COVID-19, we do not have solid data to indicate it can improve clinical outcomes.”

Pharmaceutical scientists at UAB’s Antiviral Drug Discovery and Development Center came up with the drug, in part through a $39 million research grant from the National Institute of Health, officials said.

A private pharmaceutical company in Texas claimed it had a coronavirus vaccine in late February and dozens of other companies are scrambling to find a cure for the virus which originated in Wuhan, China, and has now spread across the globe.

But Dr. Collins said it would be 2020 before a vaccine would have cleared all the hurdles normally associated with approval for a new drug. In addition, supply questions have bedeviled pharmaceutical research, given many of the ingredients and compounds used are traditionally imported from China.