In November last year, the United Kingdom was approved to market the world's first oral new crown drug, that is, monupivir in Merck in the United States, and on December 22 of the same year, the United States was approved for the treatment of the new crown virus produced by Pfizer, and subsequently, the two drugs were also licensed in Israel, Canada and other countries. Recently, the new crown oral drug VV116 independently developed by the mainland has also been approved for listing in Uzbekistan.
In recent years, the new crown pneumonia epidemic has spread around the world, seriously affecting the normal economic activities of the world, and the work of developing special drugs for the new crown virus in various countries is underway. Compared with some injectable drugs, the birth of small molecule oral drugs is more highly expected by the people of the world, the economic benefits of oral drugs are higher, the production and medication costs are low, and the storage conditions are easy to meet.
At present, among patients infected with the new crown virus, mild and moderate patients account for 85%, if these people can use oral drugs for treatment, not only can quickly eliminate the virus, but also effectively reduce the risk of transmission to others, while shortening the isolation time, may affect the mainland's existing epidemic prevention and control strategies, experts said, this role in the entire epidemic prevention and control is beyond doubt.
COVID-19 drugs, especially oral medications that can be taken at home, will be a powerful tool in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and in the treatment of patients. What is the efficacy of the new crown oral drug, and can there be the result of "two tablets to see the effect"?
Compared with injectable drugs, the process of oral drugs "fighting" the virus after reaching the body is more complicated. After a variety of injectable neutralizing antibody drugs have been approved for use, small molecule oral drugs are coming late, which is also completely expected.
In addition to the approval of two oral drugs by american companies, the new crown oral drug VV116, jointly developed by Chinese research institutes and enterprises, has also been approved for listing in Uzbekistan and is expected to start listing applications in China.
Can China's "116" become a dark horse and greatly reduce the viral load in the body? Zhong Wu, a researcher at the National Emergency Prevention and Control Drug Engineering Technology Research Center, is full of confidence in this and is very optimistic that it can become an effective drug for the treatment of new crown.
It is undeniable that the research and development of specific drugs needs to be continuously polished and improved in order to achieve the expected therapeutic effect. In the past two years, in addition to China's remarkable achievements in epidemic prevention and control, there have also been breakthroughs in the development of new coronavirus drugs, such as VV116, which has a good safety and no genotoxicity.
In addition, China has also quickly screened a large number of "old drugs" that were originally used to treat other diseases, and these drugs have played a huge role in practice. In fact, research on the new use of old drugs has been continuing.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries around the world have deployed drug development plans to accelerate the development of specific drugs, which, once successful, will greatly reduce economic costs.