The European Commission announced, in March, that three supercomputer centers in Italy, Spain and Germany would join a pharmaceutical company and several biology and biochemistry institutes to help fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
After almost three years of research, the Exscalate4CoV project managed to discover that a drug that could help treat patients with milder symptoms of the disease.
According to Dompé, the Italian pharmaceutical company participating in the project, Raloxifene, a generic drug used in cases of osteoporosis, has already proven effective against the viruses that cause Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in preclinical tests.
The tests carried out showed that the drug is able to combat the replication of the virus that causes COVID-19, SARS-Cov 2, in cells.
The group of scientists at Exscalate4CoV now wants to start testing Raloxifene in patients. Among its advantages is the fact that it is already a tested drug, with high levels of tolerance on the part of patients, and with an established toxicological profile.
