One of the pharmaceutical firms leading the global race for a cure for the deadly Coronavirus outbreak, Gilead Sciences, says more than one thousand even hundred Covid-19 patients have so far been treated with its drug remdesivir.
The company founded in 1987 and which grossed revenues in excess of $22bn in 2018, announced weekend it will be donating 1.5 million doses of the experimental anti-coronavirus drug for the treatment of 140,000 patients.
The drug will be offered for compassionate use as well as for expanded access and clinical trials and will treat patients with severe symptoms, company chairman and CEODaniel O’Day said in an open letter.
Gilead Sciences is an American biotechnology company focused on the treatment of HIV, hepatitis B & C as well as Influenza and it is headquartered in Foster City, California. In January, a World Health Organization panel called remdesivir “the most promising” therapeutic candidate based on its broad antiviral spectrum, and existing data based on human and animal studies.
Remdesivir was developed initially for Ebola and studied in patients in Eastern Congo. Multiple clinical trials are investigating the drug’s effects in Covid-19 patients in China and elsewhere.
Gilead Sciences Inc plans to boost its supply of remdesivir to more than 500,000 treatment courses by October, and then to more than 1 million by the end the year. Production time has also been accelerated to six months from one year, he said.
“While we are working with the utmost sense of urgency on the immediate needs before us, we are also looking forward,” the company said.
“Over the next weeks and months, we will be able to further increase our supplies of remdesivir as raw materials with long lead times become available for manufacture.”
The drugmaker said last week it’s switching to “expanded access” from a “compassionate use” program under which remdesivir was given.
