A breakthrough anti-viral drug found to help critically-ill patients recover from coronavirus within a week is not part of a drug trial run by the University of Oxford to find a treatment, it has emerged.
The drug remdesivir, manufactured by pharmaceutical giant Gilead Sciences, has been undergoing trials in the US and smaller trials in the UK run by the Gilead itself, in which some severely ill patients had recovered rapidly enough to be taken off ventilators within 24 hours.
Gilead said yesterday that more than 100 patients had been recruited to trial the drug at 15 NHS centres and that results should be expected within weeks.
But speaking on BBC Radio 4 this morning, Professor Peter Horby, who is leading the UK’s recovery trial of drugs at the University of Oxford, said the drug was not part of the country’s tests.
In the US, at the University of Chicago Medicine, 125 people with COVID-19 were recruited as part of global clinical trials for the drug. Of those people, 113 had severe disease.
All the patients were treated with daily infusions of remdesivir, an experimental drug first touted to treat Ebola which has been in the making for ten years.
Most of the patients have been discharged after their symptoms eased over a week, and only two patients have died.
The drug remdesivir, manufactured by pharmaceutical giant Gilead Sciences, has been undergoing trials in the US and smaller trials in the UK run by the Gilead itself (pictured, leer mas a vial of the drug Remdesivir)
Professor Horby said: ‘So that drug is in a number of trials. There is a trial that’s just finished in China and I think we will see the results of that fairly soon and it’s also in trials in the UK led by the drug company and it’s on trials in the US. But it’s not currently in our trial.’
He added: ‘I think we’ve got to be cautious. But yes, it is a drug that in the laboratory looks like it’s got good activity. So we would just hope it has the same activity in people and patients.’
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