CHINESE researchers have shown that the oral nucleoside drug VV116 — already approved for treating Covid-19 in China and Uzbekistan — exhibits significant activity against the Nipah virus, which recently appeared in West Bengal, India, and has a fatality rate of over 40%, according to a study published in Emerging Microbes & Infections.

The research team, comprised of teams led by Xiao Gengfu, Zhang Le and Shan Chao from the Wuhan Institute of Virology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Shanghai Institute of Materia Media and Hu Tianwen from VV116 developer Vigonvita Life Sciences, found that in lab experiments, VV116 and its metabolically active molecules effectively inhibited the Nipah virus, including both the Malaysian strain NiV-M and the Bangladeshi strain NiV-B, the Wuhan Institute of Virology said on its website.

In lethal-dose infection tests with golden hamsters, VV116, when administered orally at a dose of 400 milligrams per kilogram of body weight, could increase survival rates to 66.7% and significantly reduced viral loads in key organs such as the lungs, spleen and brain, according to the article entitled “The Oral Nucleoside Drug VV116 Is a Promising Candidate for Treating Nipah Virus Infections.”

However, VV116 is still at the preclinical research stage. To become an approved treatment for the Nipah virus, it still needs to go through human clinical trials, regulatory approval and market authorization, so its practical application is still a long way off.

The Nipah virus is not new and has caused several outbreaks in Malaysia, Singapore, India and Bangladesh since 1998, according to Dong-Yan Jin, professor at the School of Biomedical Sciences of the University of Hong Kong and senior associate dean of the Graduate School of the University of Hong Kong.

Jin said that the lack of effective vaccines and treatments for the Nipah virus over the years is largely due to limited research funding and the relatively small number of cases. “The virus is very deadly, but it does not spread easily and each outbreak is generally small,” he said.

(SD-Agencies)