"Through our research, we have found that this 'oxymethotodouin' drug can be used to treat the common and severe diseases of new crown virus pneumonia. The drug is best used as soon as a lesion appears in the patient's lungs. Lu Hongzhou, president of the Third People's Hospital of Shenzhen, said in an interview with the first financial reporter on the 22nd.
The research mentioned by Lu Hongzhou has been officially published in the sub-journal of Nature, Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy (Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy). The research team came from the team of Professor Yu Wenqiang, researcher of the Institute of Biomedical Sciences of Fudan University and the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, and joined the team of Professor Lu Hongzhou and the director team of the Radiology Department of the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center.
The joint research team said that after 2 years of research, it was found that the correlation between the increase in hyaluronic acid in the new crown patients and the progression of the new crown course was found, and an oral drug "oxymethotodouin" was found to block the progression of the new crown by inhibiting hyaluronic acid synthesis, and the effectiveness and safety of the oral drug were further verified in clinical trials.
In the pre-sequence study, the joint research team published an important research result in the Lancet sub-journal "EBioMedicine" ("Electronic Biomedicine") in February this year, saying that the key pathogenic factor of the new crown, "human sequence", activates the hyaluronic acid synthase gene and induces hyaluronic acid accumulation.
"Pre-sequence studies suggest that ground glass lesions in the lungs may be caused by the accumulation of hyaluronic acid in the lungs. In this study, the researchers analyzed the mass and volume of lung injury in 120 COVID-19 patients and confirmed that hyaluronic acid is associated with the initial formation of ground glass lesions in the lungs. Lu Hongzhou told reporters that ground glass lesions in the lungs are typical clinical symptoms of new crown patients.
(The picture shows the correlation between hyaluronic acid and lung lesions in patients with new crown)
Subsequently, the joint research team analyzed the relationship between hyaluronic acid and typical clinical indicators of 158 patients with new crown in Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, and found that there was no significant difference in plasma hyaluronic acid levels among healthy and mild patients with new crown. Once severe, plasma hyaluronic acid levels increase significantly. This further confirms a strong correlation between plasma hyaluronic acid levels and the progression of severe COVID-19.
To this end, the joint research team reversed the search for a drug that can inhibit hyaluronic acid synthesis and block the progression of the new crown "oxymeta coumarin" and launched clinical trials for 144 new crown patients, which is used to treat gallstones in China and can be taken orally.
The results of the study showed that 89% of patients who took oral "oxymethodumarin" experienced regression of lung lesions, compared with only 42% of the control group. Director Shan Fei said that the CT results also confirmed that compared with the control group, the lung lesions of new crown patients after oral administration of "oxymethotodoulin" improved significantly.
What further research will be done next? Lu Hongzhou told reporters that a pre-clinical trial called "preliminary assessment of oxymethotodoulin to promote the negative of the new crown virus" has been carried out in South America. At the same time, a large multi-center clinical trial is being planned to further test the effectiveness of the oral drug.