The search for the first COVID-19 treatment

WITHIN WEEKS AFTER COVID-19 CASES SPIKED TO ALARMing levels in China, researchers at Gilead in Foster City, Calif., saw an opportunity. A drug the company had developed against Ebola, remdesivir, had shown glimmers of hope in controlling coronaviruses like the one responsible for COVID-19 in the lab. “We knew in the test tube that remdesivir had more activity against coronaviruses like SARS and MERS than against Ebola,” says Dr. Merdad Parsey, chief medical officer of Gilead. After disappointing results in early tests against Ebola, Parsey and his team wondered if remdesivir could turn out to be a better treatment for COVID-19 instead.

Recently, they were rewarded with the first hopeful signs that their hunch might be correct. An international group of researchers reported that in a small study of 53 patients, 68% benefited from