How Remdesivir Works to Fight COVID-19 Inside the Body

On May 1, the U.S Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency-use authorization of remdesivir, an experimental anti-viral drug. With this clearance, doctors in the U.S. are now allowed to use the drug to treat patients with severe cases of COVID-19. Remdesivir isn’t new. It was initially developed to treat Ebola and was also tested in the lab against SARS and MERS—two other coronaviruses that infect humans much like the virus that causes COVID-19. It never made it to the approval stage for those uses, but over the last four months, scientists desperate for options to help mitigate the coronavirus pandemic have been looking towards old drugs that could be repurposed. Remdesivir has in that time traveled an unprecedented path to regulatory approval, becoming one of the most promising therapies against COVID-19 to date. Remdesivir isn’t a vaccine, and so it can’t prevent infection; instead, it works by attacking the virus once it is already spreading inside the body. Here is a look at how the COVID-19 virus propagates in the human body, and how the drug puts the brakes on that process. STEP 1: Virus enters a cell Viruses can’t multiply without using a cell’s protein-making machinery. So they first need to gain entry into a healthy cell. Coronaviruses, like the one that causes COVID-19, have a shell of spiky proteins that allow them to bind to cells. STEP 2: Virus releases genetic code The virus fuses with the cell and, once inside, rel...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news