A drug against Covid-19 found by the Institut Pasteur de Lille?

The facade of the Institut Pasteur de Lille building.

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• Researchers from the Institut Pasteur de Lille confirmed at

  20 Minutes

  having found an effective molecule for a treatment against Covid-19.

• This drug, whose name remains secret, has undergone very extensive in vitro tests since June.

• 5 million remain to be released to be able to conduct the latest clinical trials.

The long-awaited drug?

Researchers from the Pasteur Institute in Lille confirmed this Tuesday at

have found an effective molecule against Covid-19.

"It remains to conduct a clinical trial to definitively validate the antiviral activity of this molecule," said a member of the research team.

According to him, this home stretch can go quite quickly.

“We need several hundred patients for these trials,” he says.

But for now, it is the lack of funding that is holding back.

According to our information, five million euros are missing and a request for aid has been made to the State which "for the moment has not shown much interest".

"Hydroxychloroquine did not hold up on complex models"

Because it's been a few days since Pasteur finished all his in vitro tests.

“Several molecules had been identified at the end of May, but they had to be tested on increasingly precise models in order to know their real effectiveness on humans,” says the researcher.

Thus, the research team went so far as to reconstruct an artificial lung.

A single molecule has shown its efficiency to the end.

And it's not hydroxychloroquine.

"This molecule actually came out positive during the first screenings, but it did not resist on more complex models, which shows the limits of its clinical efficacy", he continues.

So what is this miracle drug?

For now, his name remains secret.

"We want to avoid the parallel market and control of stocks because it is a drug which is currently on a small market".

A test on around 2,000 molecules

According to the researchers, "the hindsight on this product is sufficient to know that it can be effective with the normal dosage administered, both in children and in adults.

And warnings about side effects are rare ”.

Pasteur's strategy, in collaboration with the Apteeus laboratories, specializing in the repositioning of drugs, therefore seems to have paid off.

This research project consisted of testing around 2,000 molecules to find those that could possibly serve as a treatment, while waiting for a possible vaccine.

Asked in May by

s, the virology researcher, Jean Dubuisson, had already shown his optimism in finding quite quickly a molecule capable of preventing the symptoms of Covid-19.

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• Lille

• Pastor Institute

• Covid 19

• Treatment

• Drug

• Coronavirus