NEW DELHI :Raising hopes for a potential treatment of Covid-19, Indias premier research organization Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has decided to test its new drug against Sepsis to treat critical patients of Covid-19.

The drug has recently been approved for marketing in India and would be available commercially as Sepsivac from Ahmedabad-based Cadila Pharmaceuticals Limited. The pharmaceutical company was supported by CSIR laboratories led by Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine (IIIM), Jammu in development of this drug, which has also found effective for leprosy patients.

This is a moment of pride for all of us as, as it is the only such drug in the global market which has been approved to treat Gram-negative sepsis. If it works against Covid-19, it will be a major breakthrough. But we have to be patient, and wait, as clinical trials are yet to begin," said Shekhar Mande, Director General, CSIR, New Delhi.

Sepsis is a serious life-threatening condition caused when bodys response to any kind of infection goes out of balance, triggering changes that can lead to multi-organ failure. According to scientists, there are some clinical similarities between patients suffering from gram-negative Sepsis and Covid-19.

A Covid-19 infection leads to a cytokine storm, quite similar to the one seen in Sepsis, when there is a heightened immune response and over production of immune cells because of which body starts attacking its own cells. There is inflammation and it reduces lungs capacity to absorb oxygen.

This drug can help boost the immunity of our body, so that this cytokine storm does not take place. It does so, by activating what is called a Th1 pathway, which helps our body to generate a very specific immune response against the virus. In short, it increases our ability to fight the infection," said Mande.

The drug which contains heat-killed mycobacterium has shown to reduce the mortality of critically ill patients of Sepsis by more than half and enables their faster recovery.

CSIR has already tied up multiple hospitals to start a randomized, controlled clinical trial to evaluate the efficacy of the drug in critically ill COVID-19 patients. An approval for the same has already been granted by the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI).

According to the team, the drug has been found to be extremely safe in patients and no systemic side effects have been associated with its use and hope that it shows positive results against Covid-19.

The plan is also to evaluate the drug in providing prophylaxis to persons coming in contact with COVID-19 infected patients like family members and health care workers.

The entire development effort including the pre-clinical and clinical studies of the drug was supervised by CSIR appointed Monitoring Committee.

As of now, there are no confirmed drugs or vaccines against Covid-19, though several clinical trials are underway.

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CSIR to test its new sepsis drug for severe patients of Covid-19 - Livemint