Cyclica, has predicted a drug, capmatinib, can be repurposed to attenuate the impact of coronavirus. The discovery was made in collaboration with Ryerson University, The Vector Institute, along with other prominent Canadian research institutions; funded by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Alliance COVID-19 grants, with funding support from FedDev Ontario.
Capmatinib, an FDA-approved MET inhibitor, marketed by Novartis under the name Tabrecta, is used clinically to treat patients with (Non-Small Cell) Lung Cancer. The consortium of research institutions showed promising results when testing capmatinib in a collection of experiments evaluating COVID viral infectivity, entry and mechanism.
The manuscript sharing the findings has been published in BioRxiv, and is currently being submitted for peer-review.
