Developing an Oral Antiviral to Fight COVID-19 and Neurodegenerative Diseases with Alain Moussy AB Science

Alain Moussy is the Co-Founder and CEO of AB Science a clinical-stage company designing and developing novel drugs to address diseases with high unmet medical needs. Masitinib, their drug in development is being investigated in neurological diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Alzheimer's, and multiple sclerosis as well for severe forms of COVID-19 and as an antiviral anti-protease in ambulatory COVID-19 patients. Alain explains, "We have started two such studies in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) disease, which is well known across the world, and another one in a rare disease called Mastocytosis, and those two studies are up and running. We have also started a phase 2 in COVID with masitinib after the University of Chicago discovered that masitinib is actually a potent antiviral against the virus, which was actually a surprise for us. Now that we have this data, we are developing masitinib for COVID as an antiviral. And you know, Karen, we need an antiviral along with the vaccine to fight this pandemic." "The development of masitinib in Covid was not anticipated because our drug was not designed to be an antiviral. It's just that the structure of the protease of the virus has a strong affinity with the structure of our compound by chance. The co-crystallizations of the protease of the virus with masitinib, which has been done by the University of Chicago, show that they match." #ABScience #COVID19 #Masitinib #AntiviralDrug #ALS #Alzheimers #MS AB-Science.com Download the transcript here