New Delhi: Sun Pharmaceutical, the country’s largest drug maker, may soon test its “plant-based” drug — which is still in the trial stage and meant for the treatment of dengue — to see if it can treat Covid-19 patients.
The Mumbai-based manufacturer of Revital tablets and Volini gel has been developing the phytochemical-based drug to treat dengue for the last four years.
In 2016, Sun Pharma started working on the medicine in collaboration with the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB) and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).
The pharma company has submitted a proposal last week to the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) — the government body responsible for the safety of drugs and medical devices in India — to conduct limited randomised trials to test the efficacy of the drug in treating Covid-19.
“Based on the data obtained on the mechanism of action of this drug, we have submitted a proposal to the CDSCO for conducting Phase II clinical trials in India for potential treatment of Covid-19,” Sun Pharma’s official spokesperson told ThePrint.
The company, according to a senior official in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, “is betting on the antiviral properties of the medicine which were found effective against dengue disease in the initial stages of human trials”.
He added the company is likely to receive the approval soon.
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‘Covid & dengue viruses behave similarly’
In May 2016, the company had announced the signing of an agreement with the ICGEB to develop a novel botanical drug for the treatment of dengue.
The botanical drug is made by using cissampelos pareira (Cipa) plant variety, which is a natural source of potent antiviral activity against all four dengue virus serotypes.
The senior health ministry official quoted above said that a team from Sun Pharma met CDSCO officials Monday for a detailed briefing on the “mechanism of action” of the drug.
“Trials will explain better but the company cited that coronavirus and dengue-causing viruses behave similarly in the human body. So it should be tried for Covid-19,” the official added.
According to a study published in the Public Library of Science in 2015: “Cipa in addition to inherent antipyretic activity in Wistar rats, it possessed the ability to down-regulate the production of TNF-α, a cytokine implicated in severe dengue disease. Importantly, it showed no evidence of toxicity in Wistar rats, when administered at doses as high as 2g/Kg body weight for up to 1 week.”
The research concluded that it “warrants further work to explore Cipa as a source for the development of an inexpensive herbal formulation for dengue therapy. This may be of practical relevance to a dengue-endemic resource-poor country such as India”.
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