IISER Bhopal, varsity of Nebraska identify drug that can be repurposed to treat Covid-19

The Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Bhopal and the University of Nebraska Medical Centre, Nebraska, (UNMC), USA, have identified ‘Rapamycin’ as a drug that can be repurposed to treat Covid-19.

Currently being used for patients having undergone organ transplantation and certain cancer patients, Rapamycin and its analogues are commonly available in India and abroad.

Dr Amjad Husain, Principal Scientist, and Chief Executive Officer, Innovation and Incubation Center for Entrepreneurship (IICE), IISER Bhopal, and Dr Siddappa N Byrareddy, Associate Professor, Pharmacology, and Vice-Chair, Research at UNMC, USA, conducted the research.

In a peer-reviewed paper published recently in the reputed International Elsevier journal, Chemico Biological Interactions, the researchers showed that the biochemical working of this drug molecule points to its promise in the treatment of Covid-19, a press statement said here on Monday.

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The paper elaborates on the rationale of repurposing this drug for treating Covod-19 patients. Since the repurposed drug has gone through the clinical development process for the treatment of other diseases and has already been tested for toxicity, many steps in preclinical and early clinical development can be avoided and the drug can be directly tested on Covid-19 subjects in phase-II trials.

Husain said: “The development of a new drug is time-consuming and cannot be relied on as a solution in combating the immediate pandemic. Drug repurposing is an attractive solution, wherein, an existing drug used to treat another related or unrelated ailment may be tested against Covid-19.”

An example of such a repurposed drug is Remdesivir. It was originally developed to treat Hepatitis C infection. The drug has shown limited success in treating Covid-19 patients. Identification of more such drugs is important given the scale of the pandemic. Rapamycin works differently from Remdesivir. While the latter targets the virus itself, this Rapamycin targets the host proteins and may resist the infection.

“Using repurposed drug such as Rapamycin that targets mTOR, a central molecule affecting multiple signalling pathways may yield a significant clinical benefit for the treatment of Covid-19” added Dr Husain.

One of the main challenges in developing antiviral drugs for Covid-19 has been the extensive mutations that the virus undergoes, which makes one antiviral drug ineffective against another mutant, and the development of drug-resistant strains.

Treatment with drugs such as Rapamycin will not face that problem because it acts on host proteins and not on the virus. Rapamycin inhibits protein synthesis and can also arrest virus replication, irrespective of the type of mutant.