Researchers from the University of Alberta are preparing to publish clinical trials on a drug used to treat a fatal coronavirus disease in cats that will also be effective as a human remedy for COVID-19.
In just two months, our effects showed that the drug is effective at inhibiting viral replication in SARS-CoV-2 cells. This medicine is most likely for human paints, so we are encouraged to have it as an effective antiviral remedy for patients with COVID-19. “
The drug is a protease inhibitor that interferes with the virus’s ability to replicate, ending an infection. Proteases have many physical purposes and are not unusual targets of medications to treat everything from high blood pressure to cancer and HIV.
First studied through U of A chemist John Vederas and biochemist Michael James after the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003, the protease inhibitor evolved through veterinary researchers who demonstrated that it cures a deadly disease in cats.
Paintings to verify the drug of the guilty coronavirus coVID-19, a cooperative effort between 4 laboratories of the U of A, led by Lemieux, Vederas, biochemistry professor Howard Young and the founding director of the Li Ka Shing Institute of Virology, Lorne Tyrrell. Some of the experiments were conducted through Stanford’s Synchrotron Structural Molecular Biology Program.
Their findings were published in the journal Nature Communications after being first published on BioRxIV, a study website.
“There is a rule with COVID studies that all effects should be made public immediately,” Lemieux said, which is why they were published before being peer-reviewed.
She said interest in the work is high, with the paper being accessed thousands of times as soon as it was posted.
Lemieux explained that Vederas synthesized the compounds and Tyrrell opposed them to the SARS-CoV-2 virus in human tubes and mobile lines. Young and Lemieux’s teams then revealed the crystalline design of the drug when it binds to the protein.
“We decided on the three-dimensional form of protease with the drug in the pocket of the active site, with the inhibition mechanism appearing,” he said. “This will allow us to expand even more effective drugs.”
Lemieux said it will continue to verify the modifications of the inhibitor to make the virus more compatible.
But he said the existing drug had enough antiviral action against SARS-CoV-2 to continue clinical trials.
“As a general rule, for a drug to enter clinical trials, it will have to be confirmed in the laboratory and then tested on animal models,” Lemieux said. “Because this drug has already been used to treat cats with coronavirus and is effective with little or no toxicity, it has already passed those steps and this allows us to move forward.”
“Because of the knowledge that we and others have collected, we are conducting clinical trials for this drug as an antiviral drug for COVID-19.”
Researchers have established a collaboration with Anivive Life Sciences, a veterinary medicine company that develops the cat drug, to produce the quality and quantity of medicine needed for human clinical trials. Lemieux stated that it will most likely be tested in Alberta in combination with other promising antivirals such as remdesivir, the first approved remedy for conditional use in some countries, in addition to the United States and Canada.
University of Alberta School of Medicine and Dentistry
Vuong, W. and cabbage. (2020) The feline coronavirus drug inhibits SARS-CoV-2 protease and blocks virus replication. Nature communications. doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18096-2.
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