A medic group in Chengdu, Southwest China's Sichuan Province, help local residents in need to select drugs and deliver to their household amid a COVID flare-up on September 8, 2022. Photo: IC

 
China has authorized another domestic oral antiviral drug for clinical trials for COVID-19 treatment, a step further in promoting the development of China's self-developed oral COVID-19 prevention medicine.

Fujian Cosunter Pharmaceutical Co Ltd (Cosunter), the developer of the oral antiviral drug GST-HG171, said on Sunday that the company got the approval notice from the Chinese National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) on Friday.

According to Cosunter's statement, GST-HG171 has been approved for clinical trials for the treatment of mild-to-moderate COVID-19 in adults. 

As an inhibitor to the 3C-like protease in the coronavirus, the drug demonstrated excellent antiviral efficacy and safety in pre-clinical studies in animals, said Cosunter, highlighting the drug's effective antiviral capacity against the original variant, the Beta variant, the Delta variant, and the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 variants. 

Cosunter is a China-based company principally engaged in the research, development, manufacture and sales of nucleoside anti-HBV drugs. Besides Cosunter's GST-HG171, more than 10 domestically developed oral drugs for COVID-19 treatment are being researched and developed.

NMPA has just granted conditional approval to Azvudine, the first Chinese-made oral antiviral drug to treat COVID-19, for COVID-19 treatment on July 25, five months after giving conditional approval to Pfizer's COVID-19 treatment drug Paxlovid in February.