俄罗斯在抗病毒药物favipiravir的早期试验中声称有希望的迹象，星期三，
2020年5月13日上午10:24
汤森路透EDT
莫斯科（路透社）-
在俄罗斯的早期临床试验中，用于治疗新冠状病毒favipiravir的候选药物已取得了可喜的成果，
俄罗斯直接投资基金（Russian Direct Investment Fund）表示，该基金为该项目提供了1.5亿卢布（200万美元）的资金。
RDIF负责人基里尔·德米特里耶夫说
服用法维吡韦片的40名冠状病毒患者中有60％最初在日本以Avigan的名字开发，在五天内对该病毒进行了阴性测试，并表示该治疗可以将冠状病毒的恢复时间缩短一半。
Drugmakers
are rushing to develop treatments and vaccines for the highly contagious coronavirus that has killed over 290,000 people worldwide,
infected more than 4.2 million and ravaged economies globally.
Avigan, known generically as favipiravir,
was developed in the late 1990s by a company later bought by Fujifilm as it moved into healthcare.
The drug works by short-circuiting the reproduction mechanism of certain RNA viruses such as influenza.
Favipiravir
is also undergoing trials in India by Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Ltd.
Russia,
which has the second-highest number of coronavirus cases behind the United States,
is also testing vaccine prototypes on animals, while the RDIF has diverted funds to produce more tests domestically.
“This will reduce the burden on medical centres and, according to our estimates, will also reduce the number of epidemiologically dangerous patients by about 50%,”
Dmitriev said, referring to a course of favipiravir treatment.
The clinical trial of 330 patients infected with the coronavirus should be finished by the end of May,
said Andrei Ivashchenko, a professor at the Russian Academy of Sciences and chairman of the board of directors at ChemRar, the company conducting the trials.
“ChemRar’s existing production facilities…
will allow us to produce tens of thousands of treatment programmes per month, which we estimate and hope will be enough for the Russian Federation as a minimum,” said Ivashchenko.
He said early tests showed that
there were minimal side effects, although he added that more testing was needed before pregnant women could use it. The drug Avigan in Japan was found to cause birth defects.
Ivashchenko also said
there was not enough data to say how effective the treatment would be for severely ill patients.
The World Health Organisation (WHO)
sets out a four-phase overview of how clinical trials work. The trials underway in Russia would fall into the first phase of that framework.
“Phase I studies usually test new drugs for the first time in a small group of people to evaluate a safe dosage range and identify side effects,” the WHO says on its website.
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