Talk:Protease inhibitor (pharmacology)

Ivermectin
A few weeks ago, someone added Ivermectin to the list of 3C-like protease inhibitors. There were 4 cited papers in this addition, but I disagree that these cites establish ivermectin as a protease inhibitor that should be mentioned here. One paper is just a computer simulation study, one is an in vitro study, and two are reviews that don't conduct any direct study of ivermectin. The in vitro study finds that several drugs may be 3C-like protease inhibitors, not just ivermectin.

Searching Google Scholar, I found little scientific literature describing ivermectin as a protease inhibitor. The 3C-like protease page also does not mention ivermectin, though it does mention medications with much stronger backing like Nirmatrelvir. Therefore I have reverted this addition.

Asacarny (talk) 01:32, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Because the anonymous user who added Ivermectin reverted my edit, I want to quickly revisit this. The only cited paper claiming Ivermectin inhibits the 3C-like protease that goes beyond a computer simulation is V. Mody et al. (2021), which tested it in vitro. However, the concentrations this paper used would not be attainable in the human body. This piece explains that comparing V. Mody et al. with data on Nirmatrelvir, an actual 3C-like protease inhibitor, shows that the latter is 3,500 times more potent. It concludes:

"'These data tell us that ivermectin neither inhibits the viral protease in an enzyme-based assay nor slows the production of virus in cells while Pfizer's drug does both. If ivermectin is proven to be an effective Covid treatment it must be acting by some yet-unknown mechanism.'"

Asacarny (talk) 04:09, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

In
"In all cases, patents remain in force until 2010 or beyond." This comment appears in two articles I've seen so far. What does it mean? Maury 15:35, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

This is a reference to United States patent law. The short explanation is that when a pharmaceutical company develops a new drug, it has the exclusive right to produce and sell it in the US for so many years. I think it's fifteen. After that, the patent enters the public domain and anyone can look up the patent and make a generic drug to sell using the original company's ideas. However, the patent stays "on the books but no longer in force" to prevent fraud. The author is trying to say that there won't be generic versions of any of these drugs until at least 2010. Money for a while, bragging rights forever, that's US patent law.

The exception is that the government has the right to interfere with patents if the drug was developed in whole or in part with the use of public funds (grants). That was the big deal about Norvir in 2003.

Here's some more detail and probably more accuracy:

http://people.howstuffworks.com/patent.htm

Darkfrog24 17:23, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

The lede
I don't think that listing all the different drugs in the family in the lede is appropriate. Those should go into the "Antiretrovirals" section, which doesn't divide the drugs like the lede, but contains more information, and only lists the HIV ones. —Hexafluoride Ping me if you need help, or post on my talk 12:52, 30 November 2016 (UTC)