Scientists race to identify and treat SARS
pharmafile | October 28, 2003 | News story | |Â Â Â
Pharmaceutical companies, researchers and academic virologists around the world have joined the race to identify and ultimately develop vaccines to combat the rapidly spreading SARS virus.
The mystery virus was first identified in China at the end of 2002, but its transmission to countries across the world, and growing concern about its potential to kill, has forced the Government to introduce strict quarantine measures to halt its progress.
More than 250 people world-wide have already died from SARS sudden acute respiratory syndrome although experts are divided on how big a threat to global health the disease could pose. Mortality rates for the disease are only slightly higher than for existing pneumonia-type conditions, but experts say they could rise as the disease spreads.
The World Health Organisation has angered city officials in Toronto after adding it to the list of 'no go' areas for travellers, but it says it is keen to contain the disease in its early stages.
While the speed with which the disease has spread has alarmed many, Dr David Heymann, Executive Director, WHO Communicable Diseases programmes, says the pace of research has been equally "astounding".
"Because of an extraordinary collaboration among laboratories from countries around the world, we now know with certainty what causes SARS", he said.
Most scientists now agree with WHO that the virus is a new coronavirus a group of viruses linked to the common cold but experts are still not entirely sure about how the disease emerged and how it is transmitted.
Hamburg-based biotech company Artus is distributing what it says is the first commercial test for the virus. The company has developed the diagnostic test with the nearby Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in just two weeks, and is distributing kits free of charge to laboratories around the world.
Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche specialises in diagnostics and antiviral treatments, and says it should have a test ready by July.
The company's head of global research, Dr Jonathan Knowles, says it could begin work on an antiviral treatment very soon.
"We have some quite good ideas about creating a new agent that would be active. We could probably create a molecule in about six months, but that is only a molecule in the lab", he told the recent BioVision conference in Lyon.
"If it was a major epidemic and people were dying like flies, we could probably have something [a drug treatment] in 18 months, with the co-operation of government authorities. But so far it is not a major epidemic".
Another contender is US-based biotech company AVI BioPharma, which says it has made promising progress on a treatment based on similar drugs that have been in trials over the past three years. It says a drug could be available within months rather than years.
Meanwhile, doctors are using existing respiratory antiviral Ribavirin (marketed in aerosol form as Virazole by ICN in the UK) in conjunction with corticosteroids to treat the condition. Many patients on the treatment have responded well, although early in vitro tests have shown the virus to be resistant to the drug.
Dr Klaus Stohr, SARS project leader for WHO, says a number of other antiviral drugs are being tested, but that scientists were already looking to develop new drug treatments or a vaccine.
He added: "We are still optimistic that we can control the disease with the measures that have been implemented, and the understanding of the genetic composition of the virus will certainly also help to implement global surveillance".
Public health officials fear that if it is effectively contained in the developed world but allowed to spread in areas with minimal healthcare, SARS could add to the already crippling burden of disease in poorer nations.
