A study conducted by CSIC in collaboration with IIS-FJD found an effective combination of drugs against SARS-CoV-2.

The combination of ribavirin and remdesivir allows you to quickly destroy the virus, causing excess mutations in its genome that prevent it from effectively reproducing. The work opens up new treatment options for vulnerable patients who cannot eradicate the virus.

An investigation carried out by scientists from the Supreme Council of Scientific Research (CSIC) with the participation of the Health Research Institute of the Jiménez Díaz Foundation of the Autonomous University of Madrid (IIS-FJD/UAM) has discovered a new combination of two drugs that is effective against the virus that causes Covid-19.

Ribavirin, a broad-spectrum antiviral, and remdesivir, an effective drug approved against Covid-19, can quickly kill the virus when used together. The study, published in the British Journal of Pharmacology, opens up new treatment options to effectively suppress SARS-CoV-2, especially in those vulnerable patients who cannot clear the virus.

Celia PeralesCSIC researcher at the National Center for Biotechnology (CNB-CSIC) and fellow at IIS-FJD, notes that “although SARS-CoV-2 infection is currently not as severe as at the beginning of the pandemic, “in vulnerable patients such as those with debilitated immunity, it is important to have new drug combinations to combat this disease.”

To uncover the mechanism of action of these drugs, scientists used methods of mass sequencing of viruses produced after treatment. Stephen Domingo, a CSIC researcher at the Center for Molecular Biology of Severo Ochoa (CBM-CSIC-UAM), emphasizes that he found that “these drugs manage to suppress the replication of the virus by causing an excessive number of mutations in its genome, which affect the viability of the virus.” . This mechanism, called “lethal mutagenesis,” is a broad-spectrum antiviral strategy that has already been successfully applied to other highly variable RNA viruses.

The work is the result of a collaboration between several CSIC centers, the National Center for Biotechnology, the Center for Molecular Biology of Severo Ochoa and the Barcelona Institute of Molecular Biology. In the last group Nuria Verdaguer develops research into the structure and activity of the mechanism responsible for virus replication. Moreover, close collaboration with IIS-FJD opens up the possibility of transferring the results described in this publication to the clinic.

^{Authors of the study:
Carlos Garcia-Crespo, Ana Isabel de Avila, Isabel Gallego, Maria Eugenia Soria, Anthony Duran-Pastor, Pilar Somovilla, Brenda Martinez-Gonzalez, Javier Muñoz-Flores, Pablo Mínguez, Llanos Salar-Vidal, Mario Esteban-Muñoz, Elizabeth Cañar -Camacho, Cristina Ferrer-Horta, Sonia Zúñiga, Isabel Solá, Luis Enjuanes, Jaime Esteban, Ricardo Fernández-Roblas, Ignacio Gadea, Jordi Gómez, Nuria Verdaguer, Esteban Domingo and Celia Perales. Synergy between remdesivir and ribavirin leads to the disappearance of SARS-CoV-2 in cell culture. British Journal of Pharmacology, 2024. DOI: 10.1111/bph.16344.}