Roadmap for the development of disease control strategies for coronaviruses

Therapeutics

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Therapeutics

Research Question

Developing affordable antiviral therapeutics for a wide range of animals effective in wildlife, pets and livestock

Administering antiviral therapeutics to wildlife populations is challenging due to the unknown infection status of animals. Moreover, regulations/protections for certain species can restrict access
Cost of therapeutics for livestock systems inhibits widespread use, especially for those in low- and middle-income regions
A societal behaviour of preserving therapeutics for human, companion animal or high value animal use in an effort to reduce antiviral resistance development could restrict its use in wildlife populations
Inappropriate use of therapeutics could result in antiviral drug resistance as well as a risk of environmentally acquired antiviral drug resistance

Increase the efforts toward basic science to develop affordable antivirals or evaluate the re-purposing of existing therapeutics, that are then validated against wildtype coronaviruses
Define therapeutics strategies for different host species, and conduct social studies for acceptability of the interventions
Basic science to study novel drug combinations that may enhance antiviral activities and mitigate the risk of antiviral drug resistance

Conducting basic science in models of wildlife animals will require the development of appropriate tools (e.g. novel cell lines or 3D cultures) for wildlife species. This is currently a limiting factor that hinders our progress
Residues of several drugs may pose high ecotoxicological risk in receiving waters – studies into the long-term ecological impacts of therapeutic control tools are needed