COVID-19 Therapeutics and Vaccines: A Race to Save Lives

Abstract

COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019), the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2) is an ongoing global public health emergency. As understanding of the health effects of COVID-19 has improved, companies and agencies worldwide have worked together to identify therapeutic approaches, fast-track clinical trials and pathways for emergency use, and approve therapies for patients. This work has resulted in therapies that not only improve survival, reduce time of hospitalization, and time to recovery, but also include preventative measures, such as vaccines. This manuscript discusses development programs for 3 products that are approved or authorized for emergency use at the time of writing: VEKLURY (remdesivir, direct-acting antiviral from Gilead Sciences, Inc.), REGEN-COV (casirivimab and imdevimab antibody cocktail from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc.), and Comirnaty (Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine [Pfizer, Inc.-BioNTech]), and perspectives from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Zebrafish behavioral response to ivermectin: insights into potential neurological risk

“…The current COVID-19 pandemic has spurred a massive research effort into therapeutics and vaccines against the SARS-CoV2 virus in order to save lives [1]. Given the urgency of the need for therapeutics, drug repurposing formed a substantial portion of these efforts, although not all potential treatments were sufficiently assessed scientifically for this application.…”

Transplantation Amid a Pandemic: The Fall and Rise of Kidney Transplantation in the United States

“…Several factors may account for the increased resilience of the transplant system since the Initial wave, including increased COVID-19 testing capacity, 3 , 32 prioritized COVID-19 testing for donors and recipients, 33 normalization of COVID-19 prevention protocols in hospitals and the community, 34 – 36 improvements in the treatment of COVID-19, 37 – 39 and the advent of effective vaccines. 40 – 42 A study on liver transplantation throughout the pandemic noted that deferring living donor transplantation was commonplace and considered ethical to protect healthy donors’ health and that COVID minimal-exposure pathways have been created to resume living donor transplantation as local disease burden has declined.…”

“…27 It appears that‚ instead of shutting down completely in the face of the pandemic, as time has gone on, transplant centers have developed a protocol to reject organs when absolutely necessary because of COVID-19 concerns but deliver this life-changing surgery as soon as it is deemed safe by the center, even though the safety of these practices has not been established in the literature. 27 Several factors may account for the increased resilience of the transplant system since the Initial wave, including increased COVID-19 testing capacity, 3,32 prioritized COVID-19 testing for donors and recipients, 33 normalization of COVID-19 prevention protocols in hospitals and the community, [34][35][36] improvements in the treatment of COVID-19, [37][38][39] and the advent of effective vaccines. [40][41][42] A study on liver transplantation throughout the pandemic noted that deferring living donor transplantation was commonplace and considered ethical to protect healthy donors' health and that COVID minimal-exposure pathways have been created to resume living donor transplantation as local disease burden has declined.…”

An Update on the Application of CRISPR Technology in Clinical Practice

“…The recent COVID-19 pandemic caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (also known as nCoV-2 or SARS-CoV-2) has become an important global health problem in the last three years because it is responsible for more than 6.5 million ( https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus ) deaths worldwide and enormous economic and social limitations [ 59 ]. However, the antiviral drug Veklury (remdesivir) has been approved for the treatment of patients (Oct 2020); Some others, such as monoclonal antibody therapies, have been approved through the emergency use authorization (EUA) [ 60 ]. Despite the short time since the emergence of COVID-19, the virus was widely targeted in clinical trials and several distinct types of vaccines have been developed [ 60 ].…”

“…However, the antiviral drug Veklury (remdesivir) has been approved for the treatment of patients (Oct 2020); Some others, such as monoclonal antibody therapies, have been approved through the emergency use authorization (EUA) [ 60 ]. Despite the short time since the emergence of COVID-19, the virus was widely targeted in clinical trials and several distinct types of vaccines have been developed [ 60 ]. Today, many clinical trials are registered in different databases with the keyword of COVID-19, but a few are associated with the CRISPR technology.…”