Ralph Baric gets a mention here ... as a coauthor, one of 20 ,, about the prodrug EIDD-2801
https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/12/541/eabb5883 April29
The primary goal of this study was to determine the antiviral activity of the nucleoside analog NHC (EIDD-1931)
against multiple emerging CoV in vitro and antiviral efficacy of its prodrug, EIDD-2801, in mouse models of CoV pathogenesis.
There is a new rabbithole in progress with Merck
https://www.washingtonpost.com…idgeback-biotherapeutics/
"Emory University’s coronavirus pill EIDD-2801 highlights financial speculation on drugs developed with public investment
where Merck pays big money to Ridgeback, which pays small money to Emory U...which uses tax payers $
"“I would think that universities … would not normally transfer products to basically a house-flipper,” said Aaron S. Kesselheim, a physician
at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and professor at Harvard Medical School.
“I wouldn’t think they would have to engage with speculators, like it appears that Ridgeback Biotherapeutics is.”
The largesse of Merck in donating billions of doses of the generic Ivermectin" Mectizan" for river blindness/elephantiasis
hopefully will be a factor whwn they consider the final pricing of EIDD-2801.
Perhaps it will be cheaper than Gilead's Remdesivir
https://investors.merck.com/ne…ram-Progress/default.aspx
but it will never be cheaper than Ivermectin...the ionophore which is increasingly showing anti-Covid effectiveness
as for Ivermectin.. is Merck interested in financing trials ???like this at Liverpool U... perhaps ionophores are just too boring for R&D..
https://www.pharmaceutical-bus…dd-2801-covid-19-phase-2/
Ridgeback begins enrolment for phase 2 Covid-19 trial of EIDD-2801 .. today.