Nipah virus outbreak has erupted in India. Due to the virus’s high mortality rate of up to 75%, and the lack of effective treatment, countries worldwide are concerned about the potential for further spread. On the 26th, the Wuhan Institute of Virology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced that the teams led by Gengfu Xiao/Lei-Kuo Zhang and Chao Shan have discovered that the oral nucleoside drug VV116 shows highly effective inhibitory activity against the Nipah virus.
The research teams of Researchers Gengfu Xiao/Lei-Kuo Zhang and Chao Shan at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, together with Dr. Tianwen Hu from Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica and Wangshan Wangshui Biopharmaceutical Co., Ltd., have published their research titled “The oral nucleoside drug VV116 is a promising candidate for treating Nipah virus infection” in the international journal Emerging Microbes & Infections, confirming that the oral nucleoside drug VV116 possesses significant antiviral activity against Nipah virus.
VV116 (Deuterium-remdesivir hydrobromide tablets) is a novel oral nucleoside antiviral drug that has been approved for the treatment of COVID-19 in Uzbekistan and China. The study found that as a prodrug targeting viral RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp), both VV116 and its active metabolite exhibited marked inhibitory activity against Nipah virus (including the Malaysian strain NiV-M and Bangladeshi strain NiV-B) in vitro. In a lethal dose infection model of golden hamsters, oral administration of VV116 at 400 mg/kg body weight increased the survival rate of the experimental animals to 66.7%, and significantly reduced the viral load in target organs such as the lungs, spleen, and brain.