Covid-19 is the most serious public health crisis facing the world today. There are now more than 87 million cases and almost 2 million deaths worldwide. With no signs of abating, there are new Coronavirus epicentres still emerging in hot spots around the world.
In spite of the recent vaccine rollouts, there is vaccine hesitancy and a mutating virus presents further challenges. Repurposed drugs like Hydroxychloroquine and Remdesivir have been met with limited success. Convalescent plasma therapy has inconclusive evidence to support wide adoption.
Polling data shows that 30% to 50% of the worlds population will not take the vaccine. We cannot pretend that at least 3 billion people simply do not exist. For them, it’s either the vaccine or its nothing. Covimro is designed to bridge that gap.
So against this backdrop, our team decided to investigate alternative ways of fighting the virus. Promising pilot data shows that Covimro is capable of disrupting the viral membrane and dislodging the S Spike Proteins upon contact. A virus that is structurally degraded loses infectivity quickly. This is significant as it paves the way towards creating prophylactic treatment models that may help reduce the viral load. This can give the immune system a helping hand so it stands a better chance of fighting the virus, which may result in improved patient outcomes.
Covimro has a virus agnostic, 3 stage design architecture that addresses the full lifecycle of the virus. It is designed to structurally degrade the virus upon contact, prevent it from attaching to the cell, and reduce its ability to multiply once it gets inside the cell. Being virus agnostic bring two key advantages; immunity against antigenic drift and immunity against the even more serious antigenic shift. In a pandemic situation these 2 facets are of critical importance to keep up with a mutating virus.
Covimro 1 has Virucidal MOA via the chemistry of lipid polymorhphism. It targets and mechanically degrades the virus sphere.
Covimro 2 has Antiviral MOA. Its molecules coat the S-Spike protein inhibiting early fusion and cleaving events.
Covimro 3 has Anti proliferative MOA by targeting and inhibiting viral enzyme 3CL. New models borrowed from cancer research and RNA genetics are being investigated for a potential 2nd complementary MOA to suppress viral replication within the cell.
The use of electron microscopy complements the Covimro In Vitro cell culture studies. Cryo-EM in particular offers a great advantage in that it provides high magnification allowing for the virus to be viewed and studied closely.
Furthermore, it offers a significant benefit in that through the direct acquisition of images the virus can be statistically analysed, allowing for the reconstruction of the structural information.
The Covimro architecture has the potential to be commercialised into candidate product pipelines across 3 industries; Consumer, OTC, and Pharmaceuticals. We are developing study plans together with our university partnerships and the private sector to further extend our scientific lead.
Planned experiments include EM control studies, cell culture studies, EC50/CC50 studies, and AI/mathematical modeling.