South Korea’s biotechnology company Hyundai Bioscience (CEO Oh Sang-gi, www.hyundaibioscience.com) announced on April 15 that it would carry out global clinical tests aimed at treating all serotypes of Dengue virus infection.
„The fundamental way to deal with Dengue fever is taking the antiviral drug, which is effective on all four serotypes of the Dengue virus, in the early stage of virus infection,“ CEO Oh said.
„To win emergency use authorization (EUA), we are planning basket clinical trials in such regions as Mid/South America and Southeast Asia.“
After the COVID-19 pandemic is tamed, a mounting number of people are diagnosed with Dengue fever, a viral infection that spreads through mosquitoes.
The number of Dengue patients in 2024 amounts to 3.58 million in the Americas, about three times more than 2023, while those stand at about 8,200 in Thailand and 18,000 in Malaysia.
Dengue deaths have been 758 in Brazil this year. The death toll exceeded 1,030 in Bangladesh last year. Against this backdrop, a host of countries in the Americas and Asia declared a public health emergency due to Dengue.
However, there is currently no treatment for Dengue fever, which was first confirmed in 1953. During the past 70 years, the world has failed to develop Dengue drugs because of the following two reasons.
First, the drug needs to be effective on all four serotypes of Dengue virus (DENV1, DENV2, DENV3, and DENV4). The four Dengue serotypes are different in their genomes and may show differing clinical symptoms after infection. Those who recover from an infection with one Dengue serotype have immunity against that particular one only, and they can be infected with any of the remaining three Dengue serotypes. Worse, subsequent Dengue infections have a higher risk to result in severe Dengue such as Dengue hemorrhagic fever.
Second, Dengue antiviral should be administered in the early stages to properly deal with the Dengue virus. Dengue symptoms typically occur 4 to 10 days after infection. The Dengue virus quickly surges to the highest level in 2 to 4 days from the symptom onset, causing severe cellular damage along with such potential complications as hemorrhage and thrombocytopenia. Symptoms of Dengue fever are similar to those generated by other mosquito-borne Zika and Chikungunya viruses. As it takes time to diagnose Dengue infection in addition to the symptom onset, patients may suffer from severe cellular damage even after they are treated.
Hence, a broad-spectrum antiviral drug effective on all such mosquito-borne viruses is necessary to treat Dengue fever and similar mosquito-borne illnesses.
Hyundai Bioscience has come up with a fundamental way to tackle the difficulties in developing the Dengue drug.
Hyundai Bioscience has succeeded in re-purposing niclosamide, which has been proven to have antiviral efficacy against four serotypes of dengue virus through past in vitro studies.
Despite niclosamide’s broad-spectrum antiviral activity, researchers failed to develop niclosamide-based antivirals due to its low absorption and short half-life. Yet, Hyundai Bioscience tackled the challenges with bio-friendly inorganic substances and polymers based on its proprietary drug delivery system (DDS) technology.
Entdecke mehr von LabNews
Melde dich für ein Abonnement an, um die neuesten Beiträge per E-Mail zu erhalten.
