They find a combination of drugs effective against the COVID-19 coronavirus

In recent research, a novel combination of two drugs has been found that is effective against SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19.

The study was carried out by scientists from the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) in Spain. The team is led by Carlos García-Crespo, from the Severo Ochoa Molecular Biology Center (CBM), a joint center of the CSIC and the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) in Spain.

Ribavirin, a broad-spectrum antiviral agent, and remdesivir, an effective agent approved against COVID-19, can quickly extinguish the virus when used in combination.

The study opens up new treatment possibilities for the effective suppression of SARS-CoV-2, especially in those vulnerable patients who cannot eliminate the virus.

Celia Perales, CSIC researcher at the National Center for Biotechnology (CNB) and collaborator at the Jiménez Díaz Foundation Health Research Institute (IIS), points out that “although currently SARS-CoV-2 infection is not as serious as “that at the beginning of the pandemic, in vulnerable patients such as the immunosuppressed, it is important to have new combinations of drugs to combat it.”

To reveal the mechanism of action of these drugs, scientists have applied massive sequencing methods on the viruses resulting after treatment. Esteban Domingo, CSIC researcher at the Severo Ochoa Molecular Biology Center, highlights that they have thus identified that “these drugs manage to collapse the replication of the virus by inducing an excess of mutations in its genome that affect viral viability.” This mechanism, called “lethal mutagenesis,” is a broad-spectrum antiviral strategy that has already been successfully applied with other highly variable RNA viruses.

A researcher working in the CBM biological containment laboratory. (Photo: CBM / CSIC / UAM)

The work is the result of the collaboration of several CSIC centers, the National Center for Biotechnology, the Severo Ochoa Molecular Biology Center and the Barcelona Institute of Molecular Biology. In the latter, Nuria Verdaguer's group is developing research on the structure and activity of the machinery responsible for multiplying the virus. Furthermore, the close collaboration with the IIS opens the possibility of transferring the findings made in this research to clinical practice in the near future.

The study is titled “Synergism between remdesivir and ribavirin leads to SARS-CoV-2 extinction in cell culture.” And it has been published in the academic journal British Journal of Pharmacology. (Source: CNB/CSIC)