Should There be More of a Focus on Developing Preventative Medications

While the general public may view the COVID-19 pandemic as a thing of the past, the virus continues to impact a significant number of people each year. Worse yet, many people who get sick with COVID find themselves facing long-term impacts, even after the initial sickness has passed.

Pharmaceutical Executive spoke with Florin Draica, senior vice president of US medical affairs at Shionogi, about the status of the disease and how new treatment methods are still being developed, such as XOCOVA. The FDA-approved medication is designed to be taken after exposure to the virus but before symptoms set in, in order to prevent serious illness.

Dr. Draica spoke about the ongoing impact of COVID, along with the industry’s broader need to start pursuing preventative medicines more often. By doing this, the public health playbook could focus on preventing illness while also treating people who still get sick.

Pharmaceutical Executive: Should there be more of a focus on developing preventative medications?
Dr. Florin Draica: The short answer is a resounding yes. Infectious diseases spread, and the earlier you can intervene — at the onset of an outbreak, immediately following exposure, or even before exposure through pre-exposure prophylaxis — the greater the public health impact.

I would start by saying that testing is foundational. You need to know when an outbreak is occurring in order to respond to it. From there, preventative antivirals become essential — to limit spread, to stop transmission early, and where infection has already occurred, to treat. The role of prevention is critical, and it is something Shionogi has recognized for a long time.

We have a longstanding heritage in anti-infectives. One of the antivirals that set a landmark in how HIV is managed was developed by Shionogi. We also developed an influenza antiviral that is used both for treatment and prevention. We brought that same philosophy to COVID-19 with XOCOVA.

While treatment options exist — and ensitrelvir, the active compound in XOCOVA, is approved for treatment in Japan and other countries — we specifically focused on post-exposure prophylaxis, recognizing that there was an unaddressed gap in that window after someone is exposed to COVID-19 and before symptom onset. That is the space XOCOVA is designed to address.