The virologist specializing in coronaviruses, Sandrine Belouzard, is participating in the study on the repositioning of a drug to fight against Covid-19.

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G. Durand / 20 Minutes

  • The Institut Pasteur de Lille has just announced that it has found a drug already on the market that could serve as an antiviral against Covid-19.

  • After successfully passing laboratory experiments, this molecule should be tested on patients in clinical trials.

  • The Hauts-de-France region must vote in aid of 785,000 euros in November to finance part of these clinical trials.

A glimmer of hope.

The Institut Pasteur de Lille has just announced that it has found a molecule - already on the market in the form of a drug - which could serve as an antiviral against Covid-19.

After successfully passing laboratory experiments, this molecule should be tested on patients in clinical trials.

A discovery that raises questions.

Was it easier and faster to find a treatment rather than a vaccine against Covid-19?

It is a question of strategy.

As early as March, Pasteur had launched, with the pharmaceutical laboratory Apteeus, a research program consisting of screening around 2,000 drugs already having a marketing authorization.

"We will perhaps discover an antiviral activity in a molecule used for another use", explained Apteeus,

20 Minutes

, at the time.

And it was the case.

"Developing a new specific drug against the disease would have required more research and much more complete clinical trials, therefore more time," explains Sandrine Belouzard, virologist at Pasteur who is also working on another research project of a new molecule against coronaviruses, today and tomorrow.

Why was the Institut Pasteur the only one to find this drug?

Other laboratories in the world have taken the same approach of screening existing drugs, but this molecule was visibly present only in the collection of Apteeus, one of the largest in the world.

This is a drug produced in small quantities and which, according to our information, was used as an anti-infective in France a few decades ago.

It is still used in some European countries.

If its effectiveness is validated by clinical trials, it can be developed in the form of tablets and used from the first symptoms in order to avoid complications towards more serious forms of this disease, but also to rapidly reduce the phenomenon of contagion.

Are we sure this medication will be effective?

As this drug was not manufactured to treat Covid-19, its effectiveness will not necessarily be optimal.

"The clinical trials will show whether it is as robust in the human body as on models that we have used", underlines Sandrine Belouzard.

Over the months, this molecule has undergone a series of increasingly sophisticated tests.

“We gradually eliminated the drugs.

We were afraid, at one point, of not finding any resistant, ”admits the virologist specializing in coronavirus.

The latest tests on respiratory epithelia (cells of the bronchi reproducing the tissue and activity of a lung) have finally enabled one to emerge, the name of which remains secret for the moment to avoid any speculation.

Why is the project stalled?

Pasteur needs five million to complete the clinical trials which must take place in the hospitals of Lille and Tourcoing, as well as in the private clinics of the Catholic Institute of Lille.

For the moment, only the Hauts-de-France region, through the voice of its president (DVD) Xavier Bertrand, has already announced its intention to pay aid.

A deliberation is scheduled for November to grant a first tranche of 785,000 euros.

The region had already subsidized another Pasteur project concerning the fight against Covid in March, to the tune of 200,000 euros.

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