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Audio Interview

Remdesivir COVID-19 clinical trial

Published on June 12, 2020   12 min

Other Talks in the Playlist: Interviews on Covid-19

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Interviewer: Professor Parmar, thank you for taking the time today to do this interview on the use of remdesivir as a COVID-19 therapy. Can you give us an overview of this drug? Prof. Parmar: Remdesivir is a drug that's been around for a while, it was originally used to treat Ebola and other virus infections such as SARS. It wasn't very successful in treating at Ebola, there were more effective drugs, but it was noticed that it was effective or active against coronaviruses, including SARS for example. Remdesivir was seen to be active in the laboratory against other coronaviruses such as SARS and when tested against COVID-19 it was also seen to be active, so it seemed to be a natural step to test it in patients with COVID-19, especially as the safety and dosing had been worked out for treating patients with Ebola. Interviewer: Could you give an overview on the clinical trial that is under way for this drug? Prof. Parmar: Yes, this trial started in February of 2020. We started recruiting subjects to this trial at the end of March and the last patient was randomized on 19th April. This was a multinational clinical trial funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the US, about 75 hospitals globally took part in the trial and