10 Feb ANTICOV: clinical trial for COVID-19 in low-resource settings to test a new combination treatment, fluoxetine and budesonide

KINSHASA / NAIROBI / GENEVA

[Français]

The ANTICOV platform clinical trial has started the recruitment of participants to test a new promising drug combination, fluoxetine and budesonide, as an early treatment for people affected with mild-to-moderate COVID-19.

The ANTICOV trial, currently conducted in 13 African countries and soon expanding to additional countries in South Asia and Latin America, aims to identify COVID-19 treatments that are optimized for use in resource-limited settings and can prevent progression to severe disease and potentially limit transmission.

‘We urgently need to identify an oral COVID-19 treatment that is safe, affordable, accessible and adapted to the specific needs of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs)’ said Nathalie Strub-Wourgaft, Director of the COVID-19 Response for the non-profit research and development (R&D) organization the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), which coordinates the ANTICOV consortium.

‘COVID-19 antivirals recently approved for use in the United States, the European Union, India, and other countries show some promise on preventing disease progression when administered to high-risk patients in the first five days of symptoms. Concerns are growing whether these antivirals will be immediately available to everyone who needs them, especially in regions where access to vaccines remains unacceptably low. In low-income countries, less than 6% of people have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19,’ Dr Strub-Wourgaft said.

The new drug combination tested by ANTICOV includes fluoxetine, better known under its brand name Prozac. Fluoxetine’s potential for COVID is based on a mechanism of action that is totally separated from its anti-depressant properties: it inhibits the ability of the virus to replicate by preventing viral entry into cells and could also carry immunosuppressive activity. It is safe and widely available. Another molecule belonging to the same class of compounds was shown in August by the TOGETHER study to be effective against COVID-19, reducing deaths and hospitalizations by up to 30%.

Fluoxetine will be tested in combination with inhaled budesonide, a safe and affordable inhaled corticosteroid known to have potent anti-inflammatory efficacy in the lungs. Studies have shown that budesonide, if taken in an early stage of the infection, improves recovery time in outpatients with COVID and may reduce hospitalizations and deaths.

‘For outpatients presenting for treatment within a week of symptom onset, which corresponds to the reality on the ground, oral drugs combinations that are adding two different mechanisms of action – an antiviral and an anti-inflammatory – are the most promising options,’ said Dr Strub-Wourgaft. ‘Such a treatment will be particularly adapted to limited-resource settings where affordable testing tools are often difficult to access.’

The combination could be effective for the first, viral replication stage of the infection and could also decrease the likelihood of the second, inflammatory stage that can start a few days later.

Fluoxetine and budesonide are commercially available and will be affordable and easy to access and administer, if shown to be effective against COVID-19. This is the fifth arm tested by the ANTICOV trial since its launch in November 2020.

ANTICOV is an ‘adaptive platform’ trial, a flexible and innovative trial design that allows for treatments to be added or removed as new evidence emerges. The selection of drugs for ANTICOV is informed by reviews conducted by the expert working group of the Unitaid and Wellcome-led Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) Therapeutics Partnership.

Major funding for the ANTICOV consortium is provided by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) through KfW and by the global health agency Unitaid as part of ACT-A. Additional support comes from the European & Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP) – under its second programme supported by the European Union with additional funding from the Swedish government – the Starr International Foundation and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).

List of ANTICOV partners 

The ANTICOV consortium is mobilizing a wide network of diverse partners with recognised experience in clinical research. The 26 members of the ANTICOV consortium are: 

• ALIMA (The Alliance for International Medical Action), France / Senegal 
• ANRS | Maladies infectieuses émergentes, France 
• Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia 
• Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), Spain 
• Bernhard-Nocht-Institut für Tropenmedizin (BNITM), Germany 
• Centre Muraz, Institut National de Santé Publique, Burkina Faso 
• Centre for Research in Therapeutic Sciences, Kenya 
• Centro de Investigação em Saúde de Manhiça, Mozambique 
• Centro de Investigação e Treino em Saúde da Polana Caniço (CISPOC), Instituto Nacional de Saúde, Mozambique 
• Centre Pasteur du Cameroun (CPC), Cameroon 
• Centre Pour Le Développement Des Vaccins, Ministry of Health, Mali 
• Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques (CSRS), Côte d’Ivoire 
• Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), Switzerland (coordinating partner) 
• Epicentre, France 
• FIND, the global alliance for diagnostics, Switzerland 
• Ifakara Health Institute, Tanzania 
• Infectious Diseases Data Observatory (IDDO), United Kingdom 
• Institute of Endemic Diseases, University of Khartoum, Sudan 
• Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp (ITM), Belgium 
• Institut National de Recherche Biomédicale (INRB), Democratic Republic of Congo 
• The Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI), Kenya 
• Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KCCR), Ghana 
• Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), Switzerland 
• Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH), Switzerland 
• Université de Bordeaux – Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), France 
• University of Gondar, Ethiopia

Media contacts 

Frédéric Ojardias (Geneva) 
fojardias@dndi.org  
+41 79 431 62 16 

Francine Ngalula (Kinshasa) 
francinengal@gmail.com  
+243 816 402 389 

Linet Atieno Otieno (Nairobi) 
latieno@dndi.org  
+254 705 63 99 09 

Ilan Moss (New York) 
imoss@dndi.org 

+1 646 266 5216 

About DNDi

A not-for-profit research and development organization, DNDi works to deliver new treatments for neglected patients, those living with Chagas disease, sleeping sickness (human African trypanosomiasis), leishmaniasis, filarial infections, mycetoma, paediatric HIV, and hepatitis C. DNDi is also coordinating the ANTICOV clinical trial to find treatments for mild-to-moderate COVID-19 cases in Africa. Since its inception in 2003, DNDi has delivered nine new treatments to date, including new drug combinations for kala-azar, two fixed-dose antimalarials, and DNDi’s first successfully developed new chemical entity, fexinidazole, approved in 2018 for the treatment of both stages of sleeping sickness. dndi.org

Photo credit: Mountaga Drame / ALIMA