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  • NEWS FEATURE

Hundreds of COVID trials could provide a deluge of new drugs

Two years into the pandemic, the COVID-19 drugs pipeline is primed to pump out novel treatments — and fresh uses for familiar therapies.
  1. Heidi Ledford
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A lab technician wearing a face mask and a protective suit works on a production line packaging Molnupiravir

A lab technician works on the production of molnupiravir, an oral antiviral drug that some countries have authorized for use against COVID-19. Credit: Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters/Alamy

It takes Lawrence Tabak about 15 minutes to rattle off all the potential COVID-19 treatments being tested in the clinical trial programme he oversees: a lengthy, tongue-twisting list that includes drugs to disarm the virus, to soothe inflammation and to stop blood clots. Over the past two years, the ACTIV programme, run by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), has included more than 30 studies — 13 of them ongoing — of therapeutic agents chosen from a list of 800 candidates. Several of the studies are due to report results in the first half of the year.

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Nature 603, 25-27 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00562-0

References

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