(Yicai Global) May 18 -- Chinese drug developer Jiangsu Simcere Pharmaceutical has been given the go-ahead from China’s regulators to start clinical trials of its orally-taken Covid-19 prevention medicine in the country’s first such approval.

Simcere’s share price [HKG:2096] was trading down 0.61 percent at HKD9.78 (USD1.45) as of 2:30 p.m. China time today.

SIM0417, developed by the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica and Wuhan Institute of Virology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is a highly active small molecule candidate Covid-19 drug with low toxicity, Nanjing-based Simcere said yesterday.

The drug can be used among close contacts of Covid-19 cases in post-exposure prophylaxis, which means receiving medical treatment within a certain period of being exposed to a pathogen. If SIM0417 goes to market, it will greatly reduce health departments’ workload of having to manage close contacts, it said.

Simcere will select people within 48 hours of them coming in contact with infected cases for the tests, the firm told Yicai Global. China’s regular Covid-19 testing discovers new infections very quickly, and the sooner the prevention medicine is administered to close contacts the better.

US biomedical giant Pfizer has tried to use its Covid-19 pill Paxlovid in post-exposure prophylaxis but was not successful. Paxlovid mainly targets the delta variant, so it is not as effective with the omicron strain, Simcere said. Pfizer also used a contact period of 96 hours for the trials, which affected the final results.

Simcere is also exploring the use of SIM0417 to treat Covid-19 patients.

Editor: Kim Taylor