Antiviral Drugs for Gaucher’s Disease Appears to Inhibit Growth of SARS CoV-2

A team of researchers from Israel have found two antiviral drugs that are used to treat a genetic disorder known as Gaucher’s disease to be effective against the coronavirus.

One of these drugs, Cerdelga, has already been approved for use by the US Food and Drug Administration while the second drug — Venglustat — is close to completing the approval process, with both the drugs likely to be fast-tracked for use on COVID-19 patients in Israel.

The Israel Institute for Biological Research {(IIBR) Ness Ziona, Israel} has published the results of their study of the treatment on mice and proposed an antiviral treatment for COVID-19 in which the two drugs should be taken together. In their study, the researchers found that a combination of the two antiviral drugs for Gaucher’s disease appeared to inhibit the growth of SARS CoV-2 and could also prove effective against other virus infections. Their test of an analog of Cerdelga and Venglustat revealed that a combination of the drugs significantly reduced the replication capacity of the coronavirus and destruction of the infected cells.

The researchers who tested the antiviral drugs on mouse models using four different RNA viruses found the two drugs to be effective in all four cases. In their study published in bioRxiv, the researchers have noted that the drugs “have an antiviral effect on the SARS-CoV-2 clinical isolate in vitro, with a single dose able to significantly inhibit viral replication within 24–48 h” in the case of COVID-19. The researchers are now testing both the drugs for their effectiveness in treating animals infected with the coronavirus.


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Israel Institute for Biological Research (IIBR)