Medical professor Woo Heung-jeong at Hallym University unveiled the drug dubbed Xafty with the codename CP-COV03 during the annual meeting of the U.S. society.
Professor Woo said that Xafty's a versatile drug, which is designed to deal with not only COVID-19 but also other virus-caused diseases by activating autophagy.
Autophagy refers to the fundamental cellular process, which eliminates unnecessary or dysfunctional components. It is a kind of cellular recycling system of the human body.
Professor Woo has cooperated with the drug's developer, Hyundai Bioscience, for its clinical tests.
Through a clinical trial combining phases two and three, which finished earlier this year, Professor Woo said that Xafty had shortened the time required to improve 12 COVID-19 symptoms by four days.
When taken within three days of symptom onset, Professor Woo said that the high-risk group improved the recovery time of 12 symptoms by six days earlier than the placebo group.
Clinical tests of the drug with 300 patients showed no serious adverse events, according to Professor Woo. Its main ingredient is niclosamide, a tried-and-tested substance since its first synthesis in the 1950s.
He said that the randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical test showed the efficacy of Xafty.
"The viruses that have caused the pandemic so far were all respiratory and RNA viruses that cause endless mutations. Due to the nature of RNA viruses, it is impossible to develop a treatment for each individual virus," the professor said.
"Xafty presented an innovative way to treat multiple respiratory viral infections with a single drug," he said.
Hyundai Bioscience strives to apply for emergency use of Xafty.
Hyundai Bioscience hopes that Xafty will become a standard COVID-19 treatment in the global market based on its price competitiveness compared to existing COVID-19 treatments, according to the Seoul-based firm.
"With the advent of penicillin antibiotics, mankind had been freed from the fear of a bacterial pandemic," Dr. Jo White said in a statement. The viral disease expert has 35 years of experience in clinical research at such pharmaceutical firms as Merck and BMS.
"As such, the birth of Xafty, the 'penicillin' of anti-virals, may be viewed as a groundbreaking achievement that presents a solution to respiratory viral infections in the future," he said.
By Kim Kyoung-ae, UPI News Korea / seok@kpinews.kr
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