Is Drug Repurposing really benefiting Covid-19 patients?

 Drug repurposing is the procedure of determining new therapeutic uses of existing/old/available drugs. It is one of the most effective methods in developing drug molecules with new therapeutic indications. The drug repurposing process is also known as drug repositioning. In the past few years, there are lots of pharmaceutical companies which are developing new drugs with the discovery of novel biological targets by implementing repositioning strategy in the drug discovery and development program. This strategy is considered the highly efficient, low-cost, time-saving and minimum risk of failure. In addition, it improves the therapeutic value of the drug as well as enhance the success rate. So, the drug repositioning strategy is an effective approach for the traditional drug discovery process.

 To find new molecular entities (NME) through a traditional approach or de-nova drug discovery process is quite lengthy, expensive and time-consuming. Drug repurposing is a lot like recycling and has become one of the most cheaper and faster ways to bring treatment to the market, especially for those who survive with rare and ultra-rare diseases.

However, this drug repositioning strategy plays a vital role in Covid-19 pandemic era. For example, now our researchers do not have to waste time to take a trial of existing drug on the human body’s because they already know the action of existing drugs. The drug is safe a not that question has already been used in a variety of age groups and body types previously. As resulted drug safety profile has understood very well. Such a previous study speeds up the drug development process for the researchers. On the behalf of the previous study about existing drugs, researchers can conduct a reduced safety trial before taking to identify the proper dosage. That’s why our globe enables us to battle with Covid-19. Most of the nations have won this battle and the rest are still struggling with this pandemic by implementing this strategy.

Hydroxychloroquine, hydroquinone etc are great example to understand the drug repurposing strategy. The traditional use of Hydroxychloroquine is to diagnose malaria but last year it was highly used to prevent coronavirus. Our researchers in India stated that Hydroxychloroquine, Hydroquinone and Paracetamol drug has the capacity to fight a virus that is another application of the drug. In that period, India exported high tans drug to other countries across the globe. Ritonavir and lopinavir are the HIV drugs that were given in combination to diagnose people with covid-19 last year. While these drugs are used to kill human deficiency virus only but it proves highly active to kill coronavirus. As same Carbamazepine drug is originally used to diagnose bipolar disorder and epilepsy in the 1960s. But researchers find the alternative application of this drug such as it is as a potential treatment for MCDS (metaphyseal chondrodysplasia type Schmid). It is a rare bone disease, causes by joint misalignment, short stature, curving and flaring of long bones. This disease can bring life-long pain as well as mobility difficulties. It is so thrilling to tell that experts have officially relaunched the MCDS-Therapy Clinical trial at both UK sites that have halted trials in response to covid-19. 

   Remdesivir is an antiviral drug that has used in 2014 when the Ebola outbreak took place. This drug has potential antiviral activity against a variety of RNA viruses. Coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has taken place due to the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) as resulted around 16 million infected patients and over 600,000 deaths across the globe by September 2020. This data was published by European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, 2020. On that period, our experts investigated antiviral compound in Remdesivir and received conditional marketing authorization from European Commission, to treat Covid-19 in adults and adolescence from 12 years of age with pneumonia who needs supplemental oxygen. However, it is great interest in drug repositioning to accelerate the determination of drugs that can cure COVID-19. However, Remdesivir plays a crucial role to prevent coronavirus (SARS-CoV-19) that denotes repurposing drug strategy is more effective as compared to finding new drug molecules.

    There are several challenges for Drug Repurposing in the Covid-19 pandemic era. For Instance, Remdesivir has proven to effective for SARS-CoV-19 but in recent days, Gilled Science declared that Remdesivir is not that much effective through which can cure coronavirus based on the clinical trials data. In addition, Ivermectin, remdesivir, Tocilizumab, Dexamethasone ritonavir and lopinavir are the class of steroids. These impart several negative impacts on those people who constantly using or getting these medications for prolong period to recover from Covid-19. Black fungus has become highly prevalent for the patient with covid-19 and diabetic patients because coronavirus and steroids have already suppressed immune system of them.

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