Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Ltd said it will begin a new clinical trial in India to test a combination of two anti-viral drugs – favipiravir and umifenovir – as a potential COVID-19 treatment.
Favipiravir is made under the brand name Avigan by Japan’s Fujifilm Holdings Corp and was approved for use as an anti-flu drug there in 2014, while umifenovir is licensed as a treatment of some types of flu infections in Russia and China.
The study will look to enroll 158 hospitalized patients with moderate COVID-19 in India. Last month, Glenmark said it would conduct clinical trials in India of just favipiravir as a potential treatment for COVID-19.
Early administration of a combination of antiviral medications acting by different mechanisms is desirable for the treatment of COVID-19 since the viral load of SARS-CoV-2 peaks around the time of symptom onset. Thus combining antiviral drugs could result in greater clinical effectiveness and could also prevent, or delay, the emergence of resistance.
Favipiravir is an oral antiviral drug approved in Japan since 2014 for the treatment of novel or re-emerging influenza virus infections. It has a unique mechanism of action by which it inhibits viral replication: it is converted into an active phosphoribosylated form (favipiravir-RTP) in cells and recognized as a substrate by viral RNA polymerase, thereby inhibiting RNA polymerase activity that is required for viral replication.
