NewG Lab Participates in Development of Nafamostat COVID-19 Treatment

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyunseok Yoo] NewG Lab announced on the 12th that it will participate as a joint research company in a drug repurposing clinical trial for the development of a treatment for the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19) based on the pancreatitis treatment drug Nafamostat.

This clinical trial will be funded by a research grant jointly contributed by the Ministry of Science and ICT's 'Emergency Response Research Project for National Life Safety' and NewG Lab, among others. The research will be conducted in a format where the team led by Professor Inkyu Bae of the Department of Infectious Diseases at Gyeongsang National University Hospital takes overall responsibility, and participating companies including NewG Lab divide and handle detailed tasks.

This clinical trial was already approved by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety on the 17th of last month, and it plans to enter clinical trials in the shortest possible time by utilizing the government-announced common IRB (Institutional Review Board) and clinical trial priority system announced on the 24th of last month.

Nafamostat is a previously approved drug used as a pancreatitis treatment and vascular anticoagulant, and it has a mechanism that inhibits the protease 'TMPRSS2,' which is known to play a key role in the cell entry process of the COVID-19 virus.

In recent cell experiments conducted with support from the Ministry of Science and ICT under the 'COVID-19 Drug Repurposing Research,' Nafamostat showed significantly higher antiviral activity against COVID-19 compared to Remdesivir (Ebola treatment) and Chloroquine (malaria treatment). Additionally, a research team from the University of Tokyo also published results indicating the efficacy of this drug in treating COVID-19, and trials evaluating Nafamostat's effectiveness have begun in Japan, Switzerland, and other countries.

Chloroquine and Remdesivir, which are being used clinically or undergoing clinical trials as COVID-19 candidate drugs, have seen consecutive deaths or research outcomes that fall short of expectations, making the development of treatments urgent and increasing expectations for Nafamostat.

Drug repurposing, which expands the application of already approved drugs to other treatment areas, is one of the drug development methods that can ensure minimum safety of pharmaceuticals while enabling rapid commercialization.

Since it is an already approved drug, it has the advantage of having sufficiently secured human safety through cell experiments, animal experiments, and clinical trials conducted during approval. Also, since it can enter Phase 2 clinical trials without going through Phase 1, it is the fastest way to develop a treatment. A company official stated, “We feel a sense of mission participating in this national important project by utilizing personnel from anticancer drug development. We will contribute to the development of a COVID-19 treatment by successfully conducting the clinical trial,” and added, “Based on the clinical data of Nafamostat and results obtained from additional experiments, we plan to jointly file a use patent with participating institutions.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.