The promising drugs included in WHO’s Solidarity Project: a choice based in scientific knowledge and institutional competencies

Galina, Andréia Cristina; Sarzi, Deise; de Medeiros, Larissa Campos; Sampaio, André Luiz Franco; Leta, Jacqueline

doi:10.1590/0074-02760200603

BACKGROUND

In March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched the Solidarity Program, probably the largest global initiative to encourage and support research in four promising drugs, named Remdesivir, Hydroxychloroquine, β Interferon and the combination Lopinavir / Ritonavir, to reduce the mortality of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

OBJECTIVES

Considering the potential impact of Solidarity Program to restrain the current pandemic, the present study aims to investigate whether it was designed upon indicators of scientific productivity, defined as the level of the production of new scientific knowledge and of the institutional capabilities, estimated in terms of scientific publications and technological agreements.

METHODS

The scientific documents on Alphacoronavirus, Betacoronavirus, Gammacoronavirus and Coronavirus were retrieved from Scopus database while the technological agreements on coronavirus were obtained through Cortellis. As for the institutions and countries, we have considered the data on author’s affiliations in both set of data. For comparison, we included the analysis of documents related with other drugs or therapies, such as vaccines and antibodies, which were listed in a Clarivate’s report on coronaviruses research.

FINDINGS

Most of the analysis refers to documents on Coronavirus, the largest group. The number of documents related to WHO’s drugs are almost five times higher than in the other groups. This subset of documents involves the largest and most diverse number of institutions and countries. As for agreements, we observed a smaller number of institutions involved in it, suggesting differences between countries in terms of technical and human capabilities to develop basic and/or clinical research on coronavirus and to develop new forms or products to treat or to prevent the disease.

MAIN CONCLUSIONS

Hence, the results shown in this study illustrate that decisions taken by an international scientific body, as WHO, were mainly based in scientific knowledge and institutional competencies.

Key words:
Solidarity Program; COVID-19; epidemic; global science; scientific publications; bibliometrics

[1] + Corresponding author: jleta@bioqmed.ufrj.br

Drugs / Sources	Drugs from WHO		Drugs from Clarivate
Drugs / Sources	Name	Nº	Name	Nº
Drugs / other drugs	Hydroxychloroquine sulfate	13	Chloroquine phospate	5
	Interferon beta	331	Danoprevir	5
	Lopinavir/ritonavir	325	Darunavir/cobicistat	16
	Remdesivir	257	Diammonium glycyrrhizinate	1
			Favipiravir	88
			Leronlimab	2
			Oseltamivir phosphate	1
Antibody			REGN 3048	4
			REGN 3051	3
			SAB-301	6
			Sarilumab	24
			Siltuximab	9
Vaccine			ChAdOx1 MERS	3
			GLS 5300	5
			mRNA 1273	4
			MVA-MERS-S	3

Variable / Sources	Documents from Scopus				Agreements from Cortellis#
Variable / Sources	WHO drugs	Other drugs	Antibody	Vaccine	WHO drugs	Other drugs	Antibody	Vaccine
Nº Documents / Agreements
With 1 institution address	270	34	12	2
With 2 institution addresses	216	35	8	3	39	47	15	30
With 3-6 institution addresses	266	35	17	9
Nº Institutions	1,310	260	152	38	52	62	15	33
Nº Countries	67	33	26	11	13	19	6	12

Drugs/Sources	Documents from Scopus	Nº	Agreements from Cortellis^#	Nº
WHO drugs	University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong	47	Gilead Sciences Inc, USA	13
	University of North Carolina, USA	24	Abbott Laboratories,USA	4
	Vanderbilt University, USA	19	AbbVie Inc, USA	3
	University of Pennsylvania, USA	13	Bayer Schering Pharma AG, Germany	3
	Harvard Medical School, USA	12	Synairgen plc, UK	2
	University of Texas, USA	12	Accord Healthcare Inc, USA	2
	University of Virginia, USA	12	Nat Inst of Allergy and Inf Diseases, USA	2
	University of Iowa, USA	11	Novartis AG, Switzerland	2
	Cleveland Clinic Foundation, USA	10	Triangle Pharmaceuticals Inc, USA	2
			University of Oxford, UK	2
Other drugs	University of Hong Kong, USA	6	CytoDyn Inc, USA	15
	Karolinska Institutet, Sweden	4	Drexel University College of Medicine, USA	3
	Peking University, China	4	FUJIFILM Toyama Chemical Co Ltd., Japan	3
	Nat Taiwan Univ Hospital, Taiwan	3	InterMune Inc, USA	3
	University of Virginia, USA	3	Progenics Pharmaceuticals Inc, USA	3
	Academic Medical Center, USA	2	Ajinomoto Althea Inc, USA	2
	Aix-Marseille Universit, France	2	Ascletis Pharma Inc, China	2
	Al-Faisal University, Saudi Arabia	2	FUJIFILM Holdings Corp., Japan	2
	Emory University, USA	2	Janssen Diagnostics BVBA, Belgium	2
	Fudan University, China	2	Johnson & Johnson, USA	2
			MediVector Inc, USA	2
			Nat Inst of Allergy and Inf Diseases, USA	2
			Roche Holding AG, Switzerland	2
			Russian Direct Investment Fund, Russia	2
			Toyama Chemical Co Ltd, Japan	2
Antibody	Columbia University, USA	4	Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc, USA	8
	Istituto Nazionale Tumori, Italy	3	EUSA Pharma, UK	4
	Harvard Medical School, USA	3	US Dep of Health and Human Services, USA	4
	Nat Inst of Allergy and Inf Diseases, USA	3	SAB Biotherapeutics Inc, USA	2
	Yale University School of Medicine, USA	3	Sanofi AS, France	2
	Macrogenics Inc., USA	2
	Sapienza University of Rome, Italy	2
	Johns Hopkins Univ School of Medicine, USA	2
	National Institutes of Health, USA	2
	Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, USA	2
Vaccine	German Centre For Infection Research, German	4	ModeRNA Therapeutics, USA	9
	Philipps University of Marburg, German	4	AstraZeneca plc, UK	6
	University of Munich, German	3	The Jenner Institute, UK	6
	University of Oxford, UK	3	University of Oxford, UK	6
			Coalition for Epidemic Prep. Innov, Norway	4
			US Dep of Health and Human Services, USA	2

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