“From the late fall of this year, we will be able to provide ‘sabizabulin’, an oral treatment for severe COVID-19 patients, to regarding 100,000 patients every month.”
Mitchell Steiner, chairman and CEO of US pharmaceutical company ‘Veru’, said in an exclusive interview with Maeil Business News recently, “Countless countries, including the US, are already requesting Veru’s severe COVID-19 treatment, so we are trying our best to expand the production volume. There is,” he said. “At a meeting with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) three weeks ago, I was advised to submit an emergency use authorization,” he said. “If you submit an application for emergency use approval early next week, we expect it to be approved within a few weeks,” he said. He said, “We plan to apply for emergency use approval one following another to countries other than the United States, including Korea.”
The domestic supply of Sabizabulin will be made through Mezion, a new drug development company. Steiner said, “I have been friends with Mezion for a long time,” said Chairman Dong-hyun Dong. In addition, he said, “We are working with Mezion to submit an application for emergency use approval as soon as possible (to the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety). We strongly suggest that you pre-order the quantity.”
Steiner is saying this because there is a high possibility that there will be a shortage of treatment for severe COVID-19 until early next year. Steiner said, “In the beginning, Veru has a supply of only 57,000 patients per month, and plans to increase the supply of treatment to 100,000 patients per month in the late fall. are working for it,” he said.
Unlike Pfizer’s Paxrovid and Merck’s Lagevrio, Savizabulin is intended for severely ill patients. Paxrovid and Lagebrio are antiviral drugs designed for patients who do not need hospitalization because of mild symptoms. These antiviral drugs had to be administered within a few days from the first day of onset of mild symptoms, so there was a limitation in that it was easy to miss the timing.
Steiner said, “Sabizabulin is an oral ‘microtubule blocker’ that is different from antiviral drugs and has dual antiviral and anti-inflammatory action. treatment significantly reduces the risk of death.”
In fact, sabizabulin has proven to be very effective in patients with severe COVID-19 who are at high risk of death. As a result of the phase 3 clinical trial, it was shown to reduce the death rate of severely ill patients by 55.2%, which is a probability that sabizabulin might potentially save 550 lives if there are 1000 severely ill patients.
Steiner emphasized that governments in each country should not assume that the COVID-19 pandemic will disappear easily. He said, “In the United States, a gradual increase is reappearing, with the number of confirmed cases reaching more than 100,000 a day as a sub-mutant of the Corona 19 Omicron mutant virus appeared. always exist,” he warned.
“It should be noted that experts expect the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases to surge once more in the fall and winter of this year,” he said. emphasized. “Through Savijabulin, I want to help people who are suffering from this terrible virus in hospitals as soon as possible,” he said.
[김시균 기자]
[ⓒ 매일경제 & mk.co.kr, 무단전재 및 재배포 금지]
