By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — A local scientist who is familiar with the FDA process is looking into potential COVID-19 treatments, but he cautions that if a new compound must go through the approval process, it won't be quick.
"I was looking at drug discovery and looking at different drugs that I made from plant origin and believe in them because I figured that they would have less side effects," said Gene Zaid, PhD, founder of Genzada Pharmaceuticals USA. "That's where that journey led us to. We were working on oncology, drugs for cancer. We are doing great with those, but this coronavirus kind of put everybody's attention to finding ways to go ahead and come up with something that will actually try to treat the virus by killing it now, until we have the ability to make vaccines."
If solutions that are currently FDA approved aren't effective, any new compounds have to go through even more testing.
"Minimum 12 to 18 months, that's if you hustle," Zaid said. "It's a new drug and you have to go through all of the validation of your procedures, methods, of identifying the compound, the impurities and then you test it on in vitro, in the petri dishes and then into animals and you actually find out if it actually works or it doesn't."
All those tests happen before anything goes into people.
"We're working on that, as well, we're working with K-State, actually," Zaid said. "We're trying to link up with a lab that can actually test COVID-19 with our drug and see if it inhibits that and then we'll be able to move with the speed of light, as fast as we can, to get it done."
There are a few compounds Genzada has provided that have shown some efficacy with related viruses in initial testing at K-State, but until there is a test with COVID-19 specifically, it's hard to know what will work.
"Our goal is treating the person that has the virus in his or her body, so it can bind with the receptors on that virus and prevent that virus from attacking the proteins in our body and bind with it and replicate," Zaid said.
The goal is to get a therapy that will reduce the duration of the illness in those with symptoms and allow time for a vaccine to be developed.