Australian scientists have developed two new drugs that could prevent COVID-19 infection and stop further spread of the virus in patients who have already contracted it, Report informs referring to ABC News.
The research team at QIMR Berghofer has come up with two separate peptide-based drugs that could be available to patients within 18 months if trials are successful.
The drugs target the human cells' response to the SARS-CoV-2 virus instead of the virus itself.
The findings of their research were published overnight in the journal Nature Cell Discovery.
Senior Researcher at QIMR Berghofer, Professor Sudha Rao, said the first drug is designed to prevent infection and would be administered pre-exposure and aid the efficacy of vaccines, while the second drug would prevent the spread of the virus within cells.
"The first treatment works by blocking the virus from entering as it effectively acts like a padlock on the human cells," she said.
"And the second drug, if the virus does enter, it prevents the virus from replicating.
Laboratory tests have demonstrated that if the virus does infect a cell, the second drug is able to prevent the virus from "hijacking" the host cell and replicating.
This boosts the immune system's ability to recognize the virus.
Professor Rao said the results of the laboratory testing were "looking very promising".
"All our testing has been done in human cells and in gold-standard models of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the COVID-19 models and in both of those what we've been able to show is that [these] drugs are very safe.
"We're waiting on final results, because we are wanting to go very soon into human testing.
"We're really hoping to start clinical trials in a few months," she said.