COVID-19: Vaccine may be ready by fall and other known reasons for hope
About a month ago, Medical News Today started a string aiming to gather the more encouraging research that emerges around COVID-19. We continue with this Special Feature that focuses on an incoming vaccine and other potential treatments because of this new coronavirus and the condition it causes.
With this series, we aim to remind our readers that while COVID-19 causes great sorrow and loss all over the world, the resulting global emergency has also meant that scientists will work at an unprecedented pace. They are making progress that is easy to overlook among the worrying numbers of new cases and deaths.
Two recent MNT articles COVID-19: 5 reasons to be cautiously hopeful and COVID-19: Physical distancing, drug trials offer hope viewed the latest developments in potential treatments, vaccines, and the outcomes of infection control measures through the pandemic.
We continue our series with this third Special Feature, which continues to monitor progress in the areas mentioned above.
We give attention to a vaccine that some researchers believe may be available by the fall and gather expert opinions on this promising development. We also cover an app-based social tracing system that may help create ‘intelligent’ physical distancing rather than national lockdowns.
Ebola drug continues showing promise
We previously reported that the World Health Organization (WHO) have launched a global megatrial which involves testing four potential treatments for COVID-19. Remdesivir, initially developed to take care of Ebola, was one of those four potential treatments.
Now, scientists from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, say that remdesivir is showing promise in in vitro experiments.
The same team had previously demonstrated that remdesivir effectively combatted another coronavirus, MERS-CoV. It did so by blocking polymerases, which are enzymes that permit the virus to replicate.
Study co-author Prof. Matthias Götte explains, “In the event that you target the polymerase, the virus cannot spread, so it’s a very logical target for treatment.”
He continues to report the results of the team’s new experiments: “We obtained almost identical results as we reported previously with MERS, so we see that remdesivir is an extremely potent inhibitor for coronavirus polymerases.”
Prof. Götte continues on to describe, “These coronavirus polymerases are sloppy, plus they get fooled, therefore the inhibitor gets incorporated often, and the virus can't replicate.”
Still, the writer cautions, “We’ve got to be patient and wait for the results of the randomized clinical trials.”
Source: www.medicalnewstoday.com
