Korean researchers find drug that is more effective than remdesivir at treating COVID-19

A research team at the Institut Pasteur Korea is experimenting with Nafamostat, an anticoagulant that is also used to treat pancreatic cancer, as a treatment for COVID-19. (provided by Getty Images)

A research team at the Institut Pasteur Korea has found a drug that appears to be much more effective than remdesivir, one of the leading candidates for inhibiting the novel coronavirus. The institute has teamed up with 10 hospitals to launch an investigator-initiated clinical trial.“Our experiment on 24 therapeutic candidates for inhibiting the coronavirus in human lung cells found that Nafamostat, an anticoagulant that is also used to treat pancreatic cancer, was the most potent antiviral inhibitor,” said Kim Seung-taek, director of the Zoonotic Virus Lab at the Institut Pasteur Korea on May 14.The research team posted their findings on bioRxiv, a preprint server for biological research papers, on May 12. Researchers also applied for a patent and submitted the paper to international journals.Drawing inspiration from recent German research that found that a protease (an enzyme that breaks down proteins) called TMPRSS2 primes the spike protein that the coronavirus uses to enter cells, the team researched various drugs’ antiviral efficacy in inhibiting that protease.