The COVID-19-inducing virus, SARS-CoV2, is likely to remain a threat to human health unless efficient drugs or vaccines become available. Given the extent of the current pandemic (people in over one hundred countries infected) and its disastrous effect on world economy (associated with limitations of human rights), speedy drug discovery is critical. In this situation, past investments into the development of new (animal-free) approach methods (NAM) for drug safety, efficacy, and quality evaluation can be leveraged. For this, we provide an overview of repurposing ideas to shortcut drug development times. Animal-based testing would be too lengthy, and it largely fails, when a pathogen is species-specific or if the desired drug is based on specific features of human biology. Fortunately, industry has already largely shifted to NAM, and some public funding programs have advanced the development of animal-free technologies. For instance, NAM can predict genotoxicity (a major aspect of carcinogenicity) within days, human antibodies targeting virus epitopes can be generated in molecular biology laboratories within weeks, and various human cell-based organoids are available to test virus infectivity and the biological processes controlling them. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has formed an expert group to pave the way for the use of such approaches for accelerated drug development. This situation illustrates the importance of diversification in drug discovery strategies and clearly shows the shortcomings of an approach that invests 95% of resources into a single technology (animal experimentation) in the face of challenges that require alternative approaches.

中文翻译：

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利用新颖的无动物测试方法开发COVID-19药物和疫苗的能力。

除非能够找到有效的药物或疫苗，否则可能会诱导COVID-19的病毒SARS-CoV2继续威胁人类健康。考虑到当前的流行病流行程度（一百多个国家的人被感染）及其对世界经济的灾难性影响（与人权的限制有关），迅速发现毒品至关重要。在这种情况下，可以利用过去对开发新的（无动物）方法（NAM）进行药物安全性，功效和质量评估的投资。为此，我们提供了将思想重新应用于缩短药物开发时间的概述。当病原体是物种特异性的，或者所需药物是基于人类生物学的特定特征时，基于动物的测试将太长，并且很大程度上会失败。幸运的是，行业已经很大程度上转向了NAM，一些公共资助计划促进了无动物技术的发展。例如，NAM可以在几天之内预测出遗传毒性（致癌性的一个主要方面），可以在数周之内在分子生物学实验室中产生针对病毒表位的人类抗体，并且各种基于人类细胞的类器官可用于测试病毒的感染性和控制生物过程他们。欧洲药品管理局（EMA）成立了一个专家小组，为使用此类方法加速药物开发铺平了道路。这种情况说明了多样化在药物开发策略中的重要性，并清楚地表明了在面临需要替代方法的挑战时，将95％的资源投入一项技术（动物实验）的方法的缺点。