Injectable niclosamide nanohybrid as an anti-SARS-CoV-2 strategy

Rejinold, N. Sanoj; Piao, Huiyan; Jin, Geun-woo; Choi, Goeun; Choy, Jin-Ho

COVID-19 is a rapidly evolving emergency, which necessitates scientific community to come up with novel formulations that could find quick relief to the millions affected around the globe. Remdesivir being the only injectable drug by FDA for COVID-19, it initially showed some promising results, however, failed later and rejected by the WHO. Therefore, it is important to develop injectable formulation that are effective and affordable. Here in this work, we formulated poly ethylene glycol (PEG) coated bovine serum albumin (BSA) stabilized Niclosamide (NIC) nanoparticles (NPs) (∼ BSA-NIC-PEG NPs) as an effective injectable formulation. Here, serum albumin mediated strategy was proposed as an effective strategy to specifically target SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The in-vitro results showed readily water dispersible formulation having particle size <120 nm size and they were well stable even after 3 weeks. Even though the in-vitro studies showed promising results, the in-vivo pharmaco-kinetic (PK) study using rats showed the need of conducting further experiments to specifically target the SARS-CoV-2 in the virus infected model. We expect that this present formulation would be highly preferred for targeting hypoalbuminemia conditions, which was often reported in elderly COVID-19 patients. Such studies are on the way to summarize its potential applications in the near future.