Derek Lowe's commentary on drug discovery and the pharma industry. An editorially independent blog from the publishers of Science Translational Medicine. All content is Derek’s own, and he does not in any way speak for his employer.
One of the small-molecule drugs that’s getting attention as a possible coronavirus treatment is Ivermectin, which is an interesting story from a couple of different directions. I’ve been getting some inquiries about it, so I thought it was time to have a look. Background on Ivermectin It’s part of a family of natural products call… Read More
The last post talked about antibodies to the spike protein of the coronavirus, and one of the main things that everyone has to keep an eye on are the mutations in that area. That has implications for monoclonal antibody therapy, for vaccine production, and for the behavior of the coronavirus itself. Antibodies against the Spike… Read More
There’s a lot of work being done on antibodies for the coronavirus and on the protein domains they recognize. This of course has bearing both on the idea of monoclonal antibody therapies and for the vaccines that are in development, so let’s have a look at the new data. For reference, here’s a background post… Read More
It’s been some days since I posted on the hydroxychloroquine situation versus the coronavirus epidemic, but I have been getting plenty of inquiries. So let’s have a look at what’s been going on! Several people have pointed out this new preprint, a retrospective look at 568 patients in Wuhan. Update: there is something odd about… Read More
Since we’ve been dealing with a lot of clinical trial data around here, I thought I would field a question from my email that might get to some things that others are thinking about as well. Here (with permission of its sender) is the idea: . . .it does seem, from the outside, like most… Read More
We’ve had several releases of remdesivir data, and this was not exactly one of those controlled-release formulations. No, this was more in the “chaotic mess” category, with news items coming from several sources with partial information. I decided not to blog on it until the loud banging noises stopped, and I’m glad I did, s… Read More
Antibodies as a therapy Let’s have a look at what is (in my opinion) probably our best shot at a reasonably short-term targeted therapy against the COVID-19 epidemic: the possibility of using monoclonal antibodies. These can be developed more quickly than vaccines, and a lot more quickly than a new targeted small-molecule antiviral. Like ever… Read More
It’s been looking for some time as if these coronavirus infections need a biphasic approach to therapy – an antiviral approach earlier on, and for those in serious trouble, perhaps a shift to immune modulation as the body’s reaction to the virus starts doing even more harm. That post goes into some detail on possible… Read More
Among the many drug-discovery lessons that this pandemic is highlighting is the difficulty of meeting the challenges of a new target, a new pathogen, a new disease, or a new mechanism of action. When you look at the history of the drug industry, the typical time for an effective therapy to be developed from a… Read More
There’s plenty of news on the coronavirus vaccine front, so let’s have a look. If you need some details on the different sorts of vaccines in general, here’s the background post, which should help this one make sense. This is a rapidly advancing field, with a huge number of programs. Some of the players are… Read More
