Halifax Company Hoping To Bring Covid-19 Drug To Canadian Patients Soon
HALIFAX – A Halifax-based health company is at the forefront in the race to get medication to market that can be used to combat the symptoms of Covid-19. Appili Therapeutics, along with their international partners Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories and Global Response Aid, is working with Health Canada for an expedited review of Favipiravir for the treatment of Covid-19.
Favipiravir is a tablet drug that has been around for about a decade and has been used to combat the severe symptoms that are caused by other infectious diseases, such as influenza.
Appili is a company that focuses on unmet needs in the world of infectious disease, the perfect kind of group to help combat a worldwide pandemic like Covid-19.
“We’re agnostic to technology, which means we look for the best solutions in science, no matter where we can find them,” explains Appili CEO and co-founder Dr. Armand Balboni.
Balboni first encountered the drug Favipiravir in 2014, while he was working with FDA in the United States in 2014, during the Ebola outbreak, when Favipiravir was one of the drugs reviewed by the administration.
“This drug works by targeting a protein that’s required for the virus to replicate,” states Balboni.
“If you stop the virus from replicating or making copies of itself, that means that other cells don’t become infected. And, when other cells don’t become infected, you don’t have the symptoms of the disease.”
In other words, if someone infected with Covid-19 takes this drug early enough, it could prevent the patient from developing some of the worst symptoms, like a severe cough or fever.
“So, we started out very early on trying to figure out, knowing how this drug works, what’s the best time to give it? And the best time to give is in the very early stages on infections,” states Balboni.
“The key to this is: get it on board early in a high enough dose so the virus doesn’t have a chance to take hold.”
If this drug is approved in Canada for the treatment of Covid-19, it could help solve the problems of hospital overcrowding during the pandemic. Since Favipiravir can be taken orally in tablet form, people could be treated while they sit in the comfort of their own home.
“There are no drugs available right now that you can take orally, at home, as an outpatient, in order to deal with the symptoms. As the hospitals fill up, we need a way to treat people at home in a way that deals with the symptoms,” said Balboni.
Appili and their partners are also confident the drug can be approved quickly since it has already been used to treat viral diseases for the past 10 years. Unlike brand new drugs, this one has already been tried and tested around the world.
“This drug has been around for a long time… it has a long history and long track record for safety, which distinguishes it from newer drugs that may have just been developed in the past six months.”
Favipiravir is already approved in Japan and China for the treatment of influenza. In India and Russia, it has been approved for emergency use for the treatment of Covid-19.
Balboni is not ready to predict a precise timeline for Health Canada to approve of the drug for Covid-19 treatment but is hopeful it could be brought to market by early 2021. From there Appili plans to help supply the drug globally to combat the disease.
Appili was founded in Halifax in 2015. Balboni said Halifax was the perfect city to set up the company because of the intelligent, scientific, minds coming out of Dalhousie University.
“There was that right combination of intellectual horsepower coming out of DAL. We knew we needed to hire smart people – scientists. Because our entire reason for being here is to source new technology to solve unmet needs in infectious disease.”