What if tomorrow it was enough to take medicine at home to treat yourself against the coronavirus?
This is what the American laboratory Pfizer is studying: an antiviral supposed to prevent the virus from replicating is currently being tested on humans in Belgium and the United States, reveals the newspaper The Telegraph.
Up to 60 volunteers, healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 60, receive the first pill specially designed to stop SARS-CoV-2.
The company, which is also the inventor of Viagra, has already tested the molecule on animals, with success.
"If the trial is successful, it is simply possible that a home remedy for Covid-19 will be available this year," writes the British daily.
The molecule tested is a "protease inhibitor": it has been formulated to attack the "spine" of the SARS-Cov-2 virus and prevent it from replicating in the nose, throat and lungs.
It is these, the protease inhibitors, that have limited the spread of HIV.
Researchers hope to have the same result with Covid-19 to curb the pandemic.
A treatment potentially prescribed at the first signs of infection
“Given how SARS-CoV-2 mutates and the continued global impact of Covid-19, having access to both short and long-term treatment options will be essential,” said Mikael Dolsten, the Chief Scientific Officer of Pfizer in a press release on the group's website.
He called the antiviral "a potential oral treatment that can be prescribed as soon as the first symptoms of infection appear, without requiring hospitalization or intensive care".
To read also Pfizer prepares "for the summer" a version of its vaccine easier to keep
At the beginning of April, David Lepoittevin, the “Monsieur Vaccin” of Pfizer-France, already presented to the Parisian the latest advances of the laboratory.
"We are in the process of developing two drugs against Covid," he announced.
These candidate antiviral treatments, one in oral form and the other administered intravenously, are still at a very early stage in their development ”.
But "the encouraging in vitro results of the oral form" encouraged Pfizer to "quickly launch a clinical study in healthy adults to assess the dose and tolerance of this drug.
The first results could arrive soon.
The intravenous antiviral candidate is also the subject of a clinical trial in participants with Covid-19 and hospitalized.
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The participants in this clinical trial will live a few intensive months: the study is divided into three stages, over a total duration of 145 days, followed by 28 days of “screening and dosing”. Even if the pill were to prove effective, it should still not be available until the end of the year.
