HANOI: Vietnam has launched clinical trials of a new antiviral drug that could offer fresh hope in the fight against dengue fever, a disease that still has no approved specific treatment worldwide.
The National Hospital for Tropical Diseases, in collaboration with South Korea-based Hyundai Bioscience company, will conduct clinical trials of an antiviral drug to treat dengue fever and similar infectious diseases in Vietnam.
The drug used in the trial, called XAFTY, will be tested at Tien Giang General Hospital in Tien Giang Province and the Central Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Hanoi.
Speaking at the launch of the trial on Thursday (March 5), Deputy Minister of Health Tran Van Thuan highlighted the clinical trial of the antiviral drug XAFTY as a significant milestone for biomedical science and infectious disease prevention and control in Vietnam.
“This event not only marks the beginning of a new scientific study, but also demonstrates the scientific community's aspiration to find effective treatments for viral infectious diseases, especially Dengue fever,” said Professor Thuan.
To date, Professor Thuan said, there are no approved specific antiviral drugs globally to treat Dengue fever and treatment currently relies primarily on symptomatic and supportive care. Therefore, research and development of effective antiviral drugs for Dengue is considered one of the important goals of modern medicine.
XAFTY is a reinvented drug developed using a new drug delivery technology with the active ingredient niclosamide, a patented drug long approved by the FDA. Niclosamide has been studied and proven to have broad-spectrum antiviral capabilities, effective against 33 viruses including 16 strains of the Covid virus, making it a suitable candidate for the reinvention of a broad-spectrum antiviral drug.
However, conventional niclosamide is almost unusable for treating systemic diseases due to its extremely low bioavailability (the amount of drug absorbed into the bloodstream), below 10 per cent.
Hyundai Bioscience has addressed this problem with its proprietary Drug Delivery System (DDS) technology, which revives the original active ingredient. This technology increases the bioavailability of niclosamide by more than five times, ensuring the drug reaches the necessary concentration in the blood to kill the virus.
The breakthrough of the drug lies in the fact that it does not directly attack the virus but instead activates the autophagy mechanism of human cells themselves. In other words, it instructs infected cells to clean up and destroy the viral particles inside.
This mechanism makes the drug immune to viral mutations, an advantage over traditional antiviral drugs.
Director of the National Hospital for Tropical Diseases Pham Ngoc Thach, said: “We now have a vaccine to prevent dengue fever. However, the vaccine is expensive so the number of people using it remains modest.
"If the trial is successful, this will be a great breakthrough, helping us to be more proactive in treatment, reduce mortality rates and alleviate the burden on lower-level hospitals."
Before arriving in Vietnam, XAFTY had also completed phase two clinical trials for Covid-19 patients in South Korea.
The study, involving 300 patients, showed that the drug reduced viral load by 56.65 per cent within 16 hours of the first dose. It also shortened the recovery time for 12 major disease symptoms by 3.5 to 5 days compared with the placebo group.
Clinical trials in Vietnam will be conducted based on existing research in terms of technology and a solid safety foundation. The goal of the trials in Vietnam is to develop the world's first comprehensive oral antiviral drug.
In Vietnam, dengue fever consistently records cyclical increases, especially during the rainy season. In recent years many localities have recorded high numbers of cases, putting significant pressure on the healthcare system and directly impacting the health, daily lives and economy of the people.
Infectious disease surveillance data shows that in 2025, Vietnam recorded 190,040 cases of dengue fever, an increase of 28.4 per cent compared with 2024. In some localities many cases are still being recorded as severe and critical, making treatment difficult, costly and potentially leaving long-term sequelae.
However, to date there is no specific treatment for dengue fever and care is mainly supportive and symptomatic. The mutation of the virus and the complexity of serotypes make the development of a treatment a major challenge for international public health. — Vietnam News/ANN
