Rutgers researchers say they're on the verge of a potential covid-19 treatment breakthrough that could work on future drug resistant strains of the virus and supplement or replace Paxlovid that's the medication currently used to prevent death and hospitalizations in high-risk patients it comes as a study by the national Center for Health statistics and the Census Bureau suggests up to 14% of all adults in New Jersey meet the criteria for long covid after initial infection it's a nebulous list of symptoms that can linger for months or longer.

COVID also remains the nation's third leading cause of death and researchers say there's a massive need for more treatment options for the latest I'm joined by one of the lead researchers associate professor Jun Wang.

Professor Jun Wang thanks so much for coming on the show so talk to me about how this medication targets the covid-19 virus in a way that other other antivirals aren't so currently the most prescribed oral COVID drug is called Paxlovid which is developed by Pfizer however there are two main problem associated with Paxlovid one is drug interaction problem so for patients with underlying diseases and also taking other medications Paxlovid cannot be used so this is one major problem another potential problem is a drug resistance issues and the researchers have found that viruses can evolve to become resistant to Paxlovid yeah that's what I'm curious about because at the moment we don't have a drug resistance strain of this virus but researchers like yourself are worried about that happening in the future yes as we do with most viruses yes you're 100% correct and so far the good news is that the resistance has not been widespread yet however like I mentioned as scientist we always want to plan ahead of time and as we learn from the lessons for the use of HIV and hcv antiviral drugs is resistance is not a question of if but a question for one so we had better address the resistance issue before they become widespread yeah so that we're not caught flat footed uh like we were when this virus uh first broke out so I'm curious though because you mentioned Paxlovid it's not prescribed that often uh and so would this medication that you're working on it's obviously not uh to Market level yet uh be more prescribable because it has less side effects so this is with a practical use of antivirus and they should only be prescribed to people who most need them and gener speaking for people with competent immune system antivirus probably not needed but like I mentioned before right for seniors and people with underlying diseases and people high risk of covid associated complications those people yes they do need to take antivirals how soon Professor might we see this come to Market and what will it mean um as we continue to battle against covid thanks so this is still and the early stage of development you need to go through extensive animal model studies and also pharmacokinetic studies then hopefully you will move to a human cleaning trials but we're doing as fast as we can the good news is that from our preliminary study in culture and also animal model studies the protease inhibitor which are the ones were developing as a next generation of covid oral drugs they have shown consistent and the promising antiviral activity against the Delta and Omicron s CO2 variance and more importantly they're also active against the resistant viruses against Paxlovid which means they can be used for the treatment of infections caused by Paxlovid resistant virus wow so potentially really breakthrough research here Dr Jun Wang is an associate professor of Medicinal Chemistry at Rutgers University thank you so much thanks for having me [Music]