First oral anti-viral drug for COVID-19 on

clinical trial in PH | The Final Word

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKMRBBJmRak&ab_channel=CNNPhilippines

do we bring these numbers down and

eventually crush
this coronavirus much of the world is
counting on vaccines while some are also
starting to develop anti-covet drugs to
save lives our country is taking part in
a global trial for one of these
medicines called monul piravir with the
united states canada and japan
joining us now is dr joel sanjogel
clinical investigator at the carino
memorial medical center in quezon city
doctor thank you so much for joining us
please share with us um
what can mol no piravir do to treat
currently sick covet 19 patients with
mild to moderate symptoms
okay first of all good evening and uh
with molno piravir we are expecting that
uh if it works well we would expect that
those patients who are infected
would recover faster because that's the
mechanism of action of this drug that it
inserts itself into the virus and
triggers uh multiple errors and
catastrophic errors inside the virus
that it would not be able to replicate
and eventually all of it would be
eliminated so that
the symptoms and the infection would not
uh progress and that the patient would
recover in a few days so is
a capsule or is it injected
it's uh orally taken so it's a capsule
you take it twice a day and you take it
just for five days
and
15 since may have already enrolled in
the global trials here in the
philippines and basically after
each
result you submitted to the
pharmaceutical maker what has been the
result of some of these enrollees in the
global trial so far doctor
okay uh unfortunately we are also
blinded we don't know what was given to
them so this uh study it's either active
drug or placebo that is being given and
then
the patients are given the medication
and then eventually their
data is evaluated and combined together
and then
the sponsor the drug maker will release
the result after all of the data coming
from uh worldwide that would have been
collected and analyzed initially doctor
what have been uh some of the results
well at least what we can say is that
from the patients who had been enrolled
in the philippines
none of them deteriorated or none of
them had worsening of their symptoms and
that is what we expect
they would have a faster or quicker
recovery period and that it would be
safe with no uh significant side effects
with its intake and and these 15
enrollees a doctor uh have they been
vaccinated or were they unvaccinated
when they had mild to moderate uh
symptoms of the covid19
yes all of these patients are
unvaccinated because that's one of the
requirements so clinical trials are very
strict
you would need to follow what the
protocol
requires so in this study the patients
are either older or they have underlying
comorbid conditions and they are not
vaccinated and that they are staying at
home so that would be the requirements
and as such that is also the reason why
it's not that easy to get the patients
for this clinical trial and how many
more uh enrollees or volunteers do you
need for the philippine trials uh for
the philippines we are trying to
enroll an additional 20 patients and
this would be either
coming to a kirin memorial medical
center or the long center of the
philippines and is there a certain a
deadline that you have from its uh
drug manufacturer merck when you should
be finishing these clinical trials
well the global target is that uh
enrollment should finish by the end of
september so that's why we're trying to
get as many patients as you can
and the big question now is uh doc
is molnu piravir effective against the
delta
and the other variants
from its mechanism of action we would
expect that it would have that potential
again we still
don't have sufficient data but uh from
the early results and from its mechanism
of action we would expect that it would
work against the different variants okay
so uh the philippines has a deadline end
of september you're still looking for 20
more
enrollees when will the drug
manufacturer start collating all of the
data and when will they come out with
the final result so this could be
distributed more widely and helped more
of our kababyans who were going through
a lot
especially during this pandemic
the target would be that by the end of
september we would have gotten all of
the patients and then they would be
analyzed and that hopefully uh in three
to six months the data and the results
of the study would be released and that
it would be finalized and that the
drug would be approved by the usfda
and the other regulatory authorities and
that eventually it also it would be
approved in the philippines and would be
available in the market are there other
drugs
being tested for cure against covid19
apart from
mole nu piravir
yes there are a lot of other
drugs either repurposed drugs so
medications that are being used for
other indications but are now being
tried uh for covid19 and definitely
there would be new molecules new
particles that are being developed but
again uh these are still under clinical
trials and
at this point we can't really say
whether or not this would proceed and
push through to eventually getting
marketed or that the results and the
data would not be that good that they
would be scrapped but uh intravenous or
a lot of different treatments are
currently being tested for kogit 19.
thank you so much doctor for sharing
your knowledge with us on malnu piravir