Media release

From: QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute

A new drug developed by QIMR Berghofer could transform the treatment of COVID-19 by potentially protecting against infection by any SARS-CoV-2 variant and reversing the persistent inflammation that is a major driver of debilitating long COVID.

The internationally peer reviewed findings of the second major study demonstrating the pre-clinical effectiveness of the peptide-based drug, NACE2i, have been published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications.

Epigeneticist and co-lead author, Professor Sudha Rao who heads QIMR Berghofer’s Gene Regulation & Translational Medicine Group, said the drug was tested repeatedly by independent laboratories using a variety of pre-clinical models.

“The results of this second major study are really exciting. It shows our drug, NACE2i, stops the virus replicating and protects against re-infection,” Professor Rao said.

“We believe it could be a highly promising adjuvant to boost the effectiveness of existing vaccines providing long-lasting protection against any variant of the virus that tries to enter the cells.

“The other major discovery is that we uncovered the pathway that the virus uses to induce the persistent inflammation which causes organ damage found in long COVID.

“This study shows our drug prevents that inflammation and even repairs damaged lung tissue in pre-clinical models. It is both a prevention and a treatment.”