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Getting vaccinated is the best way to prevent COVID-19 infection, but what about a therapy for those who do get infected? For 18 months, researchers from around the world have been seeking ways to treat the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. Now, according to a groundbreaking study from University of Michigan researchers, there are several drug contenders already in use for other treatments that could be the next therapy to reduce or kill SARS-CoV-2 infections.
Assistant professor of internal medicine and of medicinal chemistry Jonathan Sexton, PhD, senior author on the study, joined Michigan Minds to explain the process of testing FDA-approved drugs, the findings and what they mean for treating the virus, and how drug therapies could help combat the epidemic.
Sexton explains that the Center for Drug Repurposing had just been established prior to the start of the pandemic. He is a co-director of the Center and began using the infrastructure almost immediately to try and find FDA-approved drugs that are commonly available with antiviral effects to mitigate the illness.
He says that through their research, which was done in vitro (based on a human cell infection model), they identified 17 drugs that have high potential to be translated to treat COVID-19 in humans.
“We selected the most promising 17 [drugs] and then carried them forward into additional studies where we translated them into testing in very high physiologically relevant lung tissue models, as lung is the primary site of infection,” he says. “From everything we discovered, we confirmed and then prioritized based not only on their potency and efficacy and multiple cell systems, but also from what we know about how these drugs are prescribed and what concentration we can achieve in a human being.”
Sexton reviews multiple examples of drug compounds in the podcast and outlines that these drugs were tested against “all variants of concern,” including the highly transmissible delta variant.
“If we have an effective prophylactic, then we wouldn’t have the spread of these variants of concern, even amongst vaccinated people. We know that the delta variant can infect vaccinated people. And while they generally remain asymptomatic, which is great and a testament to the vaccine’s efficacy, they can still be transmissible…so it would be fantastic if we had an effective and extremely safe prophylactic that would cut down on the transmission.”
He adds that one of the big cornerstones of their recent findings is that a natural protein and commercially available dietary supplement called Lactoferrin has those qualities.
Read more on the research discoveries
Sexton outlines how this work has also helped researchers better understand different aspects of the virus, how it spreads, and how it mutates. He emphasizes that none of this would be able to be done without basic science research.
“Without all the basic science, it’s very hard for us to do the translational science, the translational medicine that we need to do. One of the areas where this can have a really big impact is in global health. There are many, many diseases that don’t have approved therapies, or where there are unmet medical needs all across the world. One way that we can make a big impact as a taxpayer-funded university doing academic drug discovery is that we can go and find these kinds of drugs. It’s a way that we can help contribute back to society,” he says.
Sexton acknowledges the collaboration efforts across the university that helped contribute to these findings, and is grateful for the University of Michigan systems that support this work.
“Michigan is just the place where this kind of thing can happen because other universities that don’t have the magnitude of the infrastructure that we have just couldn’t pull something like this off. It was an absolute heroic effort all the way around that relied on amazing infrastructure. We had a confluence of events that really put us in a prime position to make a difference, and the team worked so incredibly hard. All of our collaborators were just amazing. It was a really unique kind of science [different] from what I’ve ever done. We’ve never really operated under this kind of condition, but it was really inspiring.”
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