AbbVie is donating more than $1 million worth of an HIV drug to help
combat the fast-spreading coronavirus outbreak in China, the company
announced on Friday.
China’s National Health Commission has suggested Aluvia, a pill
containing lopinavir and ritonavir, as one of two possible treatments
for the symptoms of the virus currently known as 2019-nCoV in the
absence of effective antiviral medications. The other part is nebulized
alpha-interferon.
Government officials are rushing to contain and find solutions for an
epidemic that originated in the inland city of Wuhan, Hubei but has
since popped up in every other region except for Tibet. The Aluvia
regimen — two pills per round, twice daily — was included in the third
test version of the “diagnosis and treatment plan for new coronavirus
infections.”
Guangfa Wang, a Beijing-based pulmonary expert who contracted the
virus after visiting Wuhan for an investigation, told China’s
Time-Weekly that he took Aluvia as part of his treatment and it appeared
to be effective in his case. Shanghai officials said they have adopted
this type of HIV drugs since their first patient.
“So far it seems to have certain effects, but we need more clinical
observation,” said Hongzhou Lu of the Shanghai Public Health Clinical
Center.
The theory, yet to be proven, is that Aluvia works by blocking a
protease that the coronavirus needs for reproduction in the human body.
Though it’s not the same protease that the drug was originally designed
to block, it might be similar enough to delay disease progression.
Because of that, Aluvia had previously also been tested in patients with
SARS and MERS.
An anonymous Wuhan doctor interviewed by Time-Weekly said that Aluvia
is useful against the novel coronavirus, but it’s “hard to come by.”
AbbVie said on WeChat that it will donate RMB$10 million (around
$1.44 million) worth of pills in response to the guidance, though it
didn’t specify how it would distribute across the country.
Other drugmakers are also rushing to the call for effective
medications. Gilead dusted off remdesivir, an antiviral that missed the
mark on Ebola, to see about its potential against the new virus. Moderna
is allied with the NIH to develop a vaccine while George Scangos’ Vir
has brought out antibodies. A raft of small-cap biotechs triggered a
stock rally over potential vaccine candidates that might take years, if
ever, to materialize.
Treatments are urgently needed as the death toll in China rises to
81, five of them outside Hubei province, with almost 3,000 confirmed
cases and double that number of suspected cases even as several cities
are on lockdown. So far, five 2019-nCoV cases have been detected in the
US.
AbbVie donates $1M+ of the HIV drug that China is now recommending for coronavirus treatment
