The ‘battle’ against the Covid-19 it can’t just pass by vaccines. It is also fundamental, at the same time, to develop effective treatments and drugs capable of reducing the lethality of the virus and allowing people not to end up in intensive care, perhaps being able to treat themselves from home as happens for many other viruses. Scientists, research centers and pharmaceutical companies all over the world are well aware of this and are increasingly focusing on this aspect as well.
One, potential, excellent news comes from Italy and in particular fromUniversity of Padua.
It is a world premiere experimentation of a new possible drug against Covid. The nafamostat mesylate, a drug used in Japan for years as generic anticoagulant drug which has shown an excellent safety profile in all studies conducted so far.
A study already approved by the Technical Scientific Committee (Cts) of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, by the National Ethics Committee of the Spallanzani Hospital in Rome and by Aifa.
It will be conducted in collaboration with the Covid-19 Units of the Padua University Hospital. The controlled clinical study is designed and coordinated by prof. Gian Paolo Rossi, Director of the Emergency Medicine Operating Unit and of the School of Specialization in Emergency and Urgency Medicine, and by Prof. Teresa Seccia who teaches Internal Medicine at the University of Padua.
The drug could also work with variants, blocks the spread of the coronavirus in the body and has been shown to be especially effective in preventing thrombosis and embolisms, among the main complications of the disease.
“The drug, which was donated by Kyoso Mirai Pharma, is the most potent inhibitor of the TMPRSS2 protease, which, interacting with the Spike protein, is responsible for the virus to enter cells and spread throughout the body” explained Rossi .
“TMPRSS2, in addition to allowing the virus to penetrate the cells, activates coagulation which is responsible for thrombosis and embolism, frequent complications of Covid-19. Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, this dual action of TMPRSS2 in promoting both infection and coagulation has attracted the attention of researchers, who have identified it as the optimal target to fight Covid-19 and its terrible complications. The study will be conducted in Padua on 256 patients hospitalized but not so serious as to be hospitalized in intensive care ”, concluded the expert.