Promising At-Home Treatment for COVID-19 Discovered: FDA Approved Drug for Leprosy

Phase 2 clinical trial could begin immediately for clofazimine, an FDA-approved drug on WHO's List of Essential Medicines.

A Nature study authored by scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute and the University of Hong Kong shows that the leprosy drug clofazimine, which is FDA approved and on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines, exhibits potent antiviral activities against SARS-CoV-2.

Based on these findings, a Phase 2 study evaluating clofazimine as an at-home treatment for COVID-19 could begin immediately.

"We hope to test clofazimine in a Phase 2 clinical trial as soon as possible for people who test positive for COVID-19 but are not hospitalized. Since there is currently no outpatient treatment available for these individuals, clofazimine may help reduce the impact of the disease, which is particularly important now as we see new variants of the virus emerge and against which the current vaccines appear less efficacious."

A Phase 2 trial evaluating clofazimine in combination with interferon beta-1b as a treatment for people with COVID-19 who are hospitalized is ongoing at the University of Hong Kong.

Clofazimine was discovered in 1954 and is used to treat leprosy.

Its promise for treating COVID-19 was discovered by high-throughput screening of more than 12,000 drugs from the ReFRAME drug library-one of the most comprehensive collections of compounds that have been approved by the FDA for other diseases or that have been tested extensively for human safety.

https://scitechdaily.com/promising-at-home-treatment-for-covid-19-discovered-fda-approved-drug-for-leprosy/