Fujifilm starts new late-phase trial of Avigan in Japan for COVID patients

You want to force a virus to mutate? Throw anti-viral drugs at it.

As far as I could find, it does have some effectiveness not the great "end of covid" no silver bullet but has seen to be effective on severe covid related pneumonia.

And it seems the only serious concerns are birth defects if given to pregnant women.

So if it's use is limited to people over 50 and men of any age it doesn't seem to be such a bad idea seeing no Vaccines are coming any time soon.

It seems some think this is political.

Well as so many anti vaxxers keep going on about, the Vaccines are not 100% effective so that means some will still get sick even if vaccinated, then there are those (mostly anti vaxxers) that will not get vaccinated or cannot due to medical issues.

So a treatment in the event some does get seriously ill is not a bad idea.

Again not even the company is claiming this is a miracle drug or a treatment for all, it has limited use but none the less it may be one more thing available.

You want to force a virus to mutate? Throw anti-viral drugs at it.

That would be like "forcing a fish to swim" RNA viruses mutate constantly, every single patient has dozens of variants of the virus in their bodies. For SARS-CoV-2 no treatment of any kind has been correlated to appearance of variants what is important is the infection of patients with compromised immunity, because those patients let the virus adapt to the immunity over weeks which is how escape mutants are produced.

At this point not even Fujifim expects anything out of avigan but scientifically there is meaning in finishing clinical trials, having incomplete data that points nowhere is just a waste of money, but having negative data (as in proof of something not working and an explanation of why it did not work) can lead to the development of other drugs in the future.

It is not easy to write something positive in the face of general cynicism and negativity, but adding one more weapon to the armo(u)ry, why not? Seems like a good idea to me and probably to very sick people worldwide.

Don't you just love that katakana name!

i remember that Avigan was discarded because there's no real prove of being useful in any way.

did they prove anything yet?

Focusing on development of safe and effective vaccines is a must, but pushing forward on better pharmaceuticals for the treatment of COVID and it's variants should also be given equal priority.

THIS is why the government has been waiting on vaccination -- a homegrown treatment. It'll fail, and then once again we'll be stuck having waited while the rest of the world is above 50% of their adults vaccinated.

Haha, the old Avigan story. Was wondering when they would trot this out again. Been a couple of months

Maybe the Head of Fujifilm has been playing golf again with leading ministers? That got it in the headlines last time.

We anti-vaxers have lots of arrows in our quiver in the fight against "the covid" and the facists. Avigan has given us on more. Thank you Fujifilm. It doesn't mess with your DRA/RNA and it's a tablet; not a needle to boot. Winning.

You want to force a virus to mutate? Throw anti-viral drugs at it.

Yes, very true!

I'm not sure about the data on Avigan, but I do know it is a nucleoside analog. And I do know that another nucleoside analog (Remdesivir) is a mutagen and has been shown to increase the mutation rate of SARSCoV2 and other RNA viruses.

If we truly are concerned about the appearance of variants, we really should avoid these drugs, especially in combination with convalescent serum.

Avigan has been tested and proven useless. But Fujifilm just lost an important part of its business with the Xerox breakup so some government money is very wellcome

I'm not sure about the data on Avigan, but I do know it is a nucleoside analog. And I do know that another nucleoside analog (Remdesivir) is a mutagen and has been shown to increase the mutation rate of SARSCoV2 and other RNA viruses.

Only to a degree that decreases viability, niether Avigan nor Remdesevir have been ever correlated with the appearance of better adapted variants. That is something proved only for immunodeficiencies.

At this moment the only real thing to do about variants is to immunize as many people as possible so the vulnerable population (including those whose infection actually increases the chances of variants to appear) are not exposed to the virus.

Japan has already approved Avigan as an emergency flu medicine, and the government last year called on Fujifilm to triple national stockpiles of the drug.

What is missing from the article is the 235M USD Fujifilm got from the Abe government. They must be really missing Abe and trying out their luck once again milking that cash cow.

Don’t expect a magic bullet.

Avigan has been tested and proven useless. But Fujifilm just lost an important part of its business with the Xerox breakup so some government money is very wellcome

And if you read what @virusrex wrote you may understand how science works and why testing continues.

All very logical unless one just likes to complaining about everything.

@3RENSHO

You're right...アビガン sounds like "I'll be gone"

i remember that Avigan was discarded because there's no real prove of being useful in any way.

Actually that is not correct.

It is has not been shown to help much in early cases but has had a higher survival rate for those on respirators with severe pneumonia, again no silver bullet but considering the survival rate ate that point is between 12% and 20% and those treated with Avigan is between 23% and 38% ( the difference in survival rate% is due to different studies in different countries but all saw a higher rate of survival with Avigan).

At that point with less than 20% survival even a few percentages is better than nothing.

What ? So they aren't using avigan for C19 ?

I was under the impression that , both avigan and rmdesivir are options in Japan and people can use them should they choose to do so.

The fact that hospitals are at capacity with severe cases makes you wonder doesn't it ? If they aren't using then why not ? If they are using avigan and rmdesivir then obviously it doesnt work so there us no need for this .

Delay the vaccine.

too little, too late

Still flogging this dead horse.

I'd rather take a shot at this than those non fda approved science experiments disguised as "vaccines"

non fda approved 

The FDA - riddled with loopholes and plagued by corruption.

I hope it works, Japan needs all the help it can get.

This drug have not really show significant efficacy in anything, even in influenza. If it gets approved, it will be due to political connections rather than scientific rigor.