With COVID-19 spreading across the world at an unprecedented rate, the need for a cure is getting more and more serious. And Microsoft founder’s Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation is working on making this a reality ASAP.
The foundation has paid for 15,000 medicinal molecules to be shipped to a leading laboratory in Belgium to test and be a potential cure to the novel coronavirus.
The foundation has paid for 15,000 medicinal molecules to be shipped to a leading laboratory in Belgium to test and be a potential cure to the novel coronavirus.
The molecules are being sent from the Scripps research institute, California to Rega institute for medical research in Leuven, near Brussels. The Scripps Institute has a wide variety of active ingredients of drugs that are already existing or either in development, in its collection.
The analysis will be carried out by Professor Johan Neyts. He expects the results to be released within a fortnight of the reception of the shipment.
He said in a statement, to De Standard newspaper, “The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation hopes that there are one or more molecules among the 15,000 substances that can also inhibit the new coronavirus. We’ll figure that out for them. We will know the results a week or two after the shipment is delivered.”
He further added, “The cost to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will be a few tens of thousands of euros. That’s nothing compared to what it costs to design and market a medicine from scratch.”
Neyts isn’t expecting to find a groundbreaking drug to cure coronavirus for the world, but even some action against the novel coronavirus will be regarded as a step towards progress. He said, “A bit is also good. Or even better: a few substances that inhibit a little, and which we can then combine to hopefully cure seriously-ill patients.”
(Inputs from Agencies)
