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Coronaviruses roadmap:
Control Strategies

Roadmap for the development of disease control strategies for coronaviruses

Download 202410 Draft Coronavirus Disease control research roadmap Final

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Therapeutics

Therapeutics

Research Question

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

Research Gaps and Challenges

  • 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

Solution Routes

  • 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

Dependencies

  • 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