Innovations in healthcare have always been in pursuit of discovering something exceptional and further, something that encourage mankind to find the optimum solution for the lethal diseases. Drug discovery, being one such complex process, takes years and ages to come to commercial platform. Moreover, proving its efficacy along with the evidence of its safety seems to add more ages to this process. This enigma, which was supposed to cushion human welfare, has simply put humanities at stake today!
Yes, the world which was constantly witnessing the giant technological advancements a couple of months ago, seem to have surrender in front of a micro virus. Well, it is also subsequently true that this ‘tiny’ looking virus has such humongous power that so far, it had already devastated millions of lives. It is a bit distressing that despite the certain remarkable scientific evolutions recorded in the medical science, we have still not come up with the vaccine for COVID-19. This couldn’t simply be condemned to the lengthy drug trial or the approval procedure, but then yes; this has definitely obstructed so many associations to proceed the trials on the ‘so called potent drugs’ for COVID-19 treatment. After all, under no circumstances, drug discovery can be categorized as a ‘hit and trial’ mechanism!
In the meanwhile, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Ltd. has striven to hit the third phase of the clinical trial as part of a new randomized, open-label study. This was done to examine the combined efficacy of two antiviral drugs Favipiravir and Umifenovir which are seen as the potential approach to COVID-19’s treatment. These two antiviral drugs perceived to have an effective mechanism of action against the virus. Further, their combination may show improved treatment efficacy by effectively tackling high viral loads in patients during an early stage of the disease.
The Vice President and Head for Clinical Development Global Specialty and Branded Portfolio, Monika Tandon told: combining antiviral agents that have a good safety profile and act on different stages of viral life-cycle is an effective treatment approach to rapidly suppress initial high viral load and lead to an overall improvement in clinical parameters. A total of 158 hospitalized patients of moderate COVID-19 infection are to be enrolled in the combination study and randomized into 2 groups.
Pharmacies have not just stopped here, major giant and contract manufacturing pharmaceutical companies including Pfizer, Catalent, and Lonza are also engaged in the research & development of the drugs against coronavirus and are partnering in order to scale up their production capabilities. Such extensive contribution by these giant pharmaceutical service providers in order to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, is bringing new ray of hopes. And specially, when Glenmark is successfully striving the phase-III trial, the trust in healthcare will be restored!
A quick-view to Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Ltd. (GPL):
The company with its operations in over 50 countries is an Indian-based pharmaceutical company with its headquarters in Mumbai, Maharashtra. Driven by research, the company ,marks its presence in three core business areas including Generics, Specialty, and OTC. The core therapy focal areas of the company include oncology, dermatology and respiratory diseases.
