THE Philippines may have within a month a “functional food” that could treat the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) that has infected more than 70,000 people globally and killed over 1,700. It has also infected more than 500 patients in the Philippines.
“It can be very fast. [The functional food can be available as cure] maybe in a month’s time or even less. We just have to test it against the coronavirus,” Executive Director Dr. Jaime Montoya of the Philippine Council on Health Research and Development of the Department of Science and Technology (PCHRD-DOST) told the BusinessMirror after the news conference for the Technical Meeting and High-Level Conference on Global Innovation Index at the Philippine International Convention Center on February 17.
Montoya explained that a “functional food” helps a person against illnesses, just like tawa-tawa that is used against dengue, or turmeric, an anti-inflammatory and antioxidant crop.
He refused to identify the possible functional food because it is yet to be tested against the Covid-19.
When asked about any research his office is doing on a cure against COVID-19, the PCHRD-DOST chief told the news conference that they are “looking at some candidates [functional foods] against the novel corona virus.”
He explained that the targeted functional food is already being used against other viruses.
He said his office is working with other countries that have the live novel coronavirus, such as Singapore and Australia, in order to test the functional food against the virus.
“Hopefully, if it’s proven to have an activity against the [Covid-19] virus, we can go to the next step [of treating the infected people],” he added, noting that “drug development is a very far and very long process. But we will start with this process.”
Montoya clarified that, “It is not yet the drug, but since it can be eaten, we can tell them [infected people] to eat a lot [of the functional food] which is proven to be safe. We can tell the people it can help, it can build up their immune system without telling them it’s not a drug,” he added.
“I am very optimistic. I think it will have some activity because it is working against other viruses so it must work against [Covid-19],” he said. According to Montoya, there is no need to register the functional food with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the Department of Health because it is already available and is already registered as a functional food.
Blood screening
Montoya added that as part of the government’s interagency committee (IC) addressing the COVID-19 problem, the PCHRD-DOST proposed the funding of a project to screen, for antibodies against COVID-19, the blood specimens collected from all the patients in the country who were under investigation or monitored.
He explained that as a contribution of the country to the international search for cure against COVID-19, this aims to get the complete picture of the “total burden” of the disease in the Philippines.
“Currently we are just testing those who have symptoms. We don’t know the true burden [of the coronavirus] and whether there is actually community transmission going on,” he said.
He explained to a group of journalists that the Philippine Genome Center can do the characterization of the virus collected in the country, and the results can be submitted to the data base for use as basis for the vaccine that will be developed against Covid-19.
However, he said the Philippines has no planned research for a vaccine against the coronavirus.
Diagnostics
Montoya said another project against COVID-19 is its early diagnosis.
He identified the project similar to that of Filipino scientist Dr. Raul Destura’s the Biotek-M diagnostic kit for dengue, to be used as a platform to develop a diagnostic test for screening for Covid-19.
“We are just facilitating the validation by the WHO [World Health Organization] as prequalification prior to approval by the FDA,” he added.
Montoya said the project aims to assist the government in making the diagnostics more available not only to the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM), a national laboratory, but also to laboratories and hospitals in order to facilitate the early diagnosis and detection of COVID-19 carriers.
Biotek-M Dengue Aqua Kit, a DOST-PCHRD assisted technology, garnered one of the gold awards during the 46th International Exhibition of Inventions Geneva in Palexpo, Geneva, in 2018.
It is an affordable rapid test kit for accurate detection of dengue infection within an hour. It has high sensitivity, high specificity, robust, and is cheaper than current diagnostic tests in the market.