The King George Hospital (KGH) and Andhra Medical College (AMC) have got the approvals for testing a drug and a vaccine for coronavirus.
“Trials will be conducted for 2-Deoxy-D-Glucose, a drug developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), as an adjunctive therapy for moderate to severe COVID-19 cases,” says AMC principal and KGH superintendent P.V. Sudhakar.
How the drug works
Giving more details, he says this drug developed for cancer treatment acts as a glucose inhibitor. “The drug gets transported into the cells like glucose. However, it hampers the growth of cancerous cells which have higher glucose uptake. The same therapy will be tried on COVID patients as the virus replicates at the cellular level. This drug will act as adjunct therapy to other drugs such as remdesivir,” explains Dr. Sudhakar.
The drug which comes in granular forms will be powdered and given to patients after mixing it with water. “We will test the virus load after the drug is administered to patients in appropriate doses. The side effect of the drug among other parameters such as vomiting, nausea and blood pressure will be monitored,” says Dr. Sudhakar.
Antibody development
Further, the AMC and the KGH will also conduct the trials for the vaccine COVISHIELD developed by Oxford University with the Serum India Limited and Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) as Indian partners. It will be tested is in the third stage of trials.
The vaccine will be administered to a group of volunteers and the level of development of antibodies in the volunteers who are COVID-19 negative. “Once administered, we will see whether the vaccine has stimulating properties to increase the antibodies for the virus,” says Dr. Sudhakar.
Modalities
He further says that the drug and vaccine samples will come in blinded format, which means for every vial of drug or vaccine, there will be a vial containing no medicine or chemical. The investigators will not know which one contains the drug or vaccine.
“They will be numbered and will be tagged with the volunteers’ number. The results will be submitted and similar results will also come from at least nine testing centres. Only the central administrator will have the code. This procedure has been designed to prevent bias,” he says.
The trials for the 2-Deoxy-D-Glucose will start shortly, while the same for the vaccine will take a few more days as the protocols is yet to be discussed, adds Dr. Sudhakar.
