Too many ‘shiny objects’: Why it’s risky to promise a coronavirus cure
LOS ANGELES — A surge of optimism has followed each recent announcement about possible cures and vaccines for COVID-19, including this week’s disclosure of a treatment that was first developed for the Ebola virus.
But there is a price to pay for promising too much as the economy reels and the world anxiously awaits even a marginally effective therapeutic. Some promising announcements have been followed by reality checks, further muddling the picture about which ones will come to the rescue.
The latest came this week after Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief of the federal government’s top institute for infectious diseases, indicated that an anti-viral drug developed by biotech giant Gilead Sciences sped up by several days the recovery of about half the people with COVID-19.
Within 24 hours, however, the celebration was tempered by news that China had tested the same drug and had found no benefit against the disease. In addition, both tests apparently showed little or no improvement in the fatality rates of those infected.
Research chiefs and health experts around the world said in interviews that they are confident drugs to help treat the sick will be available within this year, with an effective vaccine coming by next year. But the research is still far too early to decide which set of drugs will work.
“We can’t move day to day and press conference to press conference to the next shiny object,” said Peter Pitts, a University of Paris visiting professor and former FDA associate director. Gilead’s drug, known as remdesivir, “is not a game-changing proposition for any person or any nation, but it could help seriously ill people and lord knows some good news is appreciated these days.”
Ultimately, a successful drug to treat infected people would have to result in significantly fewer deaths, said Wayne Chanon, chairman of United Kingdombased Stabilitech Biopharma Ltd., which is developing its own novel treatment.
With more than 100 organizations working on vaccines and drugs to prevent or cure the disease, there are bound to be a large set of failures and a number of possible winners. Scientists say it is vital to have more than one drug type to fight the disease.
“What we want is not to put all our eggs in one basket,” said Kate Broderick, research director at the San Diego lab of Inovio Pharmaceuticals, the second drug company to begin human testing of a drug. “We need to try many different options, because we need a solution as soon as possible.”
The virus, formally known as SARS-CoV-2, is both highly infectious and lethal, a combination unlike any respiratory disease in the last 100 years.
Scientists see a wide range of options in combating COVID-19.
Research teams are attempting to help individual cells use their innate self-defense capabilities to fight the initial entry of the virus. Other teams are trying to give coded information to the body’s immune system to understand how to produce antibodies that can fight the disease. And others still are trying to find molecules that can be put into the human body that will bond to the virus and disable it.
The researchers are attacking the problem with myriad cuttingedge techniques, genetic sequencing, sophisticated mathematical models and the fastest super-computers in the world.
Inovio is creating segments of genetic code from the coronavirus and fabricating it into pills. The code would tell the human immune system how to create antibodies that would fight the virus when it appears, said Broderick, the research chief. The entire package was synthesized within a day after the research team had examined the genetic code of the virus, she said, and was the second treatment in the U.S. to enter human trials.
“I like to think of our DNA medicine like an FBI wanted poster,” she said. “If you see this bad guy, attack it.”