Biopharma companies have scrambled to start new R&D projects and repurpose existing medicines amid the COVID-19 crisis. Now, Bayer is getting ready to donate an older treatment to the U.S. government for potential use, Axios reports.
The company is preparing a large donation of malaria medicine chloroquine, the publication reports, citing a senior HHS official and another unnamed source. The drug is decades old and available for cheap.
A Bayer representative didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Chloroquine isn’t approved to treat patients suffering from novel coronavirus infections, but some early studies have shown promise.
In France, for instance, a professor conducted a small study of the malaria drug in 24 patients with novel coronavirus infections. Only 25% of those who received the medicine tested positive for the virus after 6 days, according to en24. Meanwhile, of those who didn’t receive it, 90% tested positive after that timeframe. The French government now plans to run larger studies.
In a study published last month in Nature, authors wrote that “chloroquine is a cheap and a safe drug that has been used for more than 70 years and, therefore, it is potentially clinically applicable against the 2019-nCoV.”
While there’s certainly more to learn about the potential therapy, chloroquine is just one of several drugs being explored to fight the novel coronavirus pandemic.
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Sanofi and Regeneron are studying rheumatoid arthritis med Kevzara in patients with severe COVID-19, while Roche is exploring testing its arthritis med Actemra, NBC News reports. AbbVie is working with authorities on testing HIV meds Kaletra and Aluvia. And Gilead and others are already trialing the company’s investigational Ebola drug remdesivir, with data expected in April.
Besides those efforts, many companies—including Johnson & Johnson, Takeda, Sanofi and Pfizer—are advancing new drugs and vaccines.
As of Wednesday, officials around the world had reported more than 200,000 COVID-19 cases and more than 8,200 deaths.
