Remdesivir: A Review of Its Discovery and Development Leading to Emergency Use Authorization for Treatment of COVID-19
Richard T. Eastman, Jacob S. Roth, Kyle R. Brimacombe, Anton Simeonov, Min Shen, Samarjit Patnaik, Matthew D. Hall
Abstract
The global pandemic of SARS-CoV-2, the causative viral pathogen of COVID-19, has driven the biomedical community to action-to uncover and develop antiviral interventions. One potential therapeutic approach currently being evaluated in numerous clinical trials is the agent remdesivir, which has endured a long and winding developmental path. Remdesivir is a nucleotide analogue prodrug that perturbs viral replication, originally evaluated in clinical trials to thwart the Ebola outbreak in 2014. Subsequent evaluation by numerous virology laboratories demonstrated the ability of remdesivir to inhibit coronavirus replication, including SARS-CoV-2. Here, we provide an overview of remdesivir's discovery, mechanism of action, and the current studies exploring its clinical effectiveness.