The Development of PrEP for COVID-19

Pharmacy Times^® interviewed James Krellenstein, co-Founder, PrEP4All Collaboration and Organizer, The COVID-19 Working Group (CWG-NY), to discuss the development of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. These include how HIV and COVID-19 are similar in the context of the current COVID-19 pandemic, how the development of treatments for HIV can inform the development of treatments for COVID-19, and what some potential barriers are to the development of PrEP for COVID-19.

Krellenstein explained that the lack of research into the development of PrEP for COVID-19 is an oversight in COVID-19 treatment research. “Although we're all hopeful for a COVID-19 vaccine, and we're not in any way suggesting that we should discourage vaccine development, what we are encouraging is that we don't put all of our eggs in one basket on the vaccine front because vaccines can take a very long time to develop. Now, we have over 100 vaccine candidates being evaluated, but what we are seeing is that there is not the same sort of attention being paid to developing potential PrEP modalities for COVID-19, which if proven effective could really be the key to the country’s reopening.”

Krellenstein also discussed what the necessary steps are to coordinate COVID-19 PrEP research, what CWG-NY has been doing to address the COVID-19 pandemic in New York, and how the HIV pandemic and the current COVID-19 pandemic could potentially help us better respond to something like this in the future.