anti-viral drugs for the treatment of Covid-19, the University of Oxford said on Friday. The project, led by Queen’s University Belfast and funded by the Medical Research Council, will bring together experts from Queen’s, the University of Liverpool and the Oxford Univeristy. “The urgency of the SARS-CoV-2/Covid-19 pandemic requires rapid identification of new and safe drugs given early in the disease process to prevent hospitalisation," said professor Ultan Power, the principal investigator from Queen’s University.
In view of this, he said: “Successful repurposing of existing drugs, either alone or in combination will greatly accelerate this process.
Therefore, our project will seek to repurpose drugs that are already in clinical trials or approved for use and which demonstrated some antiviral activity against SARS-CoV-2." To go about the process, scientists will initially screen 138 drugs with known antiviral activity against the Covid-causing SARS-CoV-2 virus to study and identify potent combinations.
The research team is also planning to use the robust drug screening platform on a further 4,000 drugs to identify backup drug combinations to ensure a pipeline of antiviral drugs against SARS-Cov-2 for the future.