A New COVID-19 Variant Is Rapidly Spreading Around The Globe, Other Pandemic Threats Exist – What Are The Choices For Treatment?

Colds, flu and RSV aren't the only viral illnesses people have to worry about this winter. A new variant of COVID-19 is rapidly spreading, reminding the world of just how dangerous this virus is. Dubbed JN.1, the omicron variant is highly contagious and accounts for more than 85% of the reported cases nationwide. It is now the dominant strain in the U.S. and around the world and according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and it could be “intensifying” the spread of COVID-19. At the same time JN.1 is spreading, COVID hospitalizations are rising, prompting some healthcare facilities to require masks again. 

The new variant is also responsible for what is already called the second-largest surge, following the omicron breakout in late 2021 and early 2022. That surge infected more people than at the start of the pandemic in March of 2020. Meanwhile, long COVID-19 is still largely a mystery to doctors and scientists who have seen patients suffer from fatigue and other symptoms that last months after the illness is over. 

Many existing viruses continue to make circuits of epidemics around the world. 

Disease X On The Horizon 

If that isn’t bad enough, scientists are warning of another global pandemic that could be 20 times worse than COVID-19. Called Disease X, scientists at the World Health Organization believe the next pandemic could be caused by a new pathogen, not a variant of a current disease. If those predictions prove true, It would have a huge negative impact on healthcare systems and economies around the world since not enough has been done to prepare for future pandemics.

Sure, the World Bank established the Pandemic Fund, which is focused on helping low and middle-income countries strengthen their pandemic preparedness, but it may not be enough. To date, the fund mobilized $2 billion but some estimates call for the need for upwards of $10 billion a year to tackle new outbreaks. The Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB), an independent body that assesses the world’s preparedness for pandemics and other health emergencies, warned that in the wake of COVID-19, the world is woefully unprepared to deal with potential new pandemics. 

Limitations Of Vaccines And Antibodies Are Now Well Known

The COVID-19 pandemic clearly demonstrated the deficiencies of the current way of responding to the pandemic. Vaccines and antibodies, always considered reliable workhorses, can be readily escaped by viruses and become less and less useful if not completely useless.  

Nor is the current approach of developing one or more drugs for each potential viral threat a satisfactory one. Firstly, it is very expensive in terms of the costs of drug development and approval, and later on to keep the stockpiles going, and secondly, it requires that the scientists know the causative agent years ahead of the pandemic. 

And none of these approaches would work in responding to a Disease X scenario. 

A novel approach is clearly needed. One approach that could work is a drug that works against many viruses of different kinds, so even as the virus changes in the field, it will not escape the drug. 

Is that even possible? 

Think of antibiotics. Before the discovery of penicillin, there were no drugs that could treat the myriads of bacterial infections that were killing people. And the one penicillin works against many of those bacteria. That led to an explosion of developments to find similar drugs and modified penicillins that provided the ability to take the drug by mouth instead of injection, improve their effectiveness, etc. Amoxicillin, discovered in 1958, is even today the most commonly used oral antibiotic for children, over 65 years later! That is the great thing about such super-broad-spectrum drugs. 

So, is any company working on such a dream drug for viruses? Or is it just science fiction? 

Novel Drug To Fight Many Viruses Is In The Works 

It is science fiction until it becomes reality, right? There is one company that reports it has made great strides and is now very close to the goal of bringing that science fiction to everyday reality. 

Imagine the same antiviral drug that works against almost all important respiratory viruses, including the cause of COVID-19, other coronaviruses, RSV and possibly many other respiratory diseases (for example, hMPV – human metapneumovirus – which is closely related to RSV). There is one company that says it has already made it possible. The company we are talking about is NanoViricides, Inc. NNVC. This clinical-stage drug company is developing nanomedicine drugs to fight viruses including COVID-19, RSV and shingles.

NV-CoV-2, its leading drug candidate, is based on the company’s nanoviricide active pharmaceutical ingredient NV-387, which the company says blocks the reinfection cycle of the viral disease. It binds to the virus and fuses with the virus surface, uprooting the glycoproteins required for the virus to bind to the human cell – rendering it incapable of infecting a cell. While antibodies can only cover the virus, NV-387 is a chemical nanomachine that completely disrupts the virus. NanoViricides has shown in electron microscopic pictures of viruses that their drugs do indeed disrupt the virus particle. The company likens its drug ingredient to antibiotics in that it can be used to treat a variety of viruses. 

NanoViricides has already proven in demanding animal studies that NV-387 is highly effective against coronaviruses, RSV and even Smallpox/Mpox! Thus, the NanoViricides platform technology could be poised to revolutionize the fight against viruses just as antibiotics revolutionized the fight against bacterial infections. And the company is already advancing its first drug through clinical trials toward regulatory approval to make this all real.  

No Adverse Effects In Phase 1 Trial 

Towards that end, the company just completed phase 1 human clinical trials in healthy subjects, using two oral formulations: NV-CoV-2 Oral Syrup and NV-CoV-2 Oral gummies in India. Both include its nanoviricide active agent NV-387. Karveer Meditech Pvt. Ltd., the company’s licensee and collaborator, is the drug sponsor in India and has the rights to develop and commercialize the drugs in India. 

All 36 healthy human subjects have completed the clinical trial. This included single dosing studies, which were completed around the end of November, and now multiple dosing studies, which the company said were completed just recently. No adverse events or serious adverse events were reported during the entire phase 1 trial in healthy subjects, which indicates that both of the formulations are safe in humans. These results are consistent with the company’s preclinical safety/toxicology animal studies that indicated the drug NV-387 is very safe.

There are currently very few, if any safe drugs in the antiviral space. Almost all antiviral drugs have limitations due to dose-limiting toxicities or side effects. This includes the remaining approved COVID-19 drugs, namely Paxlovid® by Pfizer PFE and Remdesivir, Veklury® by Gilead GILD. As such, the safety demonstrated by NV-387 is noteworthy.

The JN.1 COVID-19 variant rapidly spreading around the world is a wake-up call. This virus isn’t going away, and the potential for even more dangerous ones is ever-present. The world isn’t prepared, but NanoViricides wants to change that. It is working hard to develop a new class of drugs that can not only fight COVID-19 and other viral illnesses but prevent them from spreading. 

With the completion of the phase 1 clinical trial that demonstrated safety and tolerability in human subjects, NanoViricides is now one step closer to realizing a dream drug that works against many different viruses. 

Featured photo by CDC on Unsplash.

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