SNA (Frankfurt) — The antiviral drug Avigan was developed by the firm Fujifilm Toyama Chemical in 2014, and it was later envisioned as Japan’s leading prospect to solve the global Covid pandemic. The drug was enthusiastically promoted by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, but this October its development was quietly terminated.

Fujifilm, publicly associated most closely with camera technology, also has interest in pharmaceuticals, and in this context Avigan, also known under its generic name Favipiravir, was developed to combat viruses. Well before the Covid pandemic it had been approved for manufacturing and sale as an influenza drug.

But Avigan was always controversial because testing suggested that it could cause deformities when used on the unborn young of animals.

The drug was, however, believed to be potentially useful against new, stronger influenza viruses that might emerge, and so when the new coronavirus arrived at the end of 2019 from Wuhan, China, it was naturally seen as a possible treatment, subject to the results of clinical testing.

March 2020 was a month that boosted Avigan’s promise. It was provided to hospitals to test as a treatment for Covid-19. Moreover, healthcare authorities in China used the drug and stated that it appeared to be quite useful. For example, Zhang Xinmin, director of the China National Center for Biotechnology Development, told reporters that it “is very safe and clearly effective.” Not only were patients who took Avigan doing better, but no side effects had been observed.

Desperate to find effective countermeasures as Covid-19 caused people to lock themselves in their homes and much of the world economy to shut down; and with fearful stories in some countries about the bodies of the dead piling up in morgues, many nations were eager to get their hands on any drug which offered a ray of hope.

It was reported that even the White House National Security Council had pushed for the US government to accept a Japanese donation of Avigan.

The Illusory Japanese White Knight

Avigan soon became wrapped up with Japanese nationalism, largely at the behest of then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

By the end of March, hearing the good news from China and sensing the political potential, Abe boasted to World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus that Japan was on the case. Japanese researchers developing medicines that would be crucial to bring the pandemic under control, and he was willing to provide Avigan to other nations in their hour of need.

He pressed the same message on G7 leaders–drug development was the way forward.

At his March 28 press conference, during which the prime minister outlined how his administration intended to grapple with the crisis, Abe declared that “the government will gather the wisdom of the world to accelerate the development of effective therapeutic drugs and vaccines, so that everyone’s anxieties can be resolved as soon as possible.”

He continued, “In Japan, four drugs have already been administered as observational studies. Of these, Avigan, which has been approved as a treatment for new strains of influenza and has known side effects, has been administered in dozens of cases. It is a drug that prevents the proliferation of viruses, and there are reports that it is already effective in improving symptoms. Many countries around the world are interested in Avigan. In the future, we will expand clinical research in cooperation with interested countries and start increasing production of the drug.”

He was moving to increase production of Avigan before scientists had reached any conclusion about its effectiveness.

Still, the government provided nearly US$130 million in funding for Avigan. Abe pledged that if early clinical trials suggested that the drug was indeed effective, it would be almost immediately approved for use, in spite of worries that it could cause birth defects.

For the next couple months, Abe repeatedly put Avigan near the top of his messaging about coronavirus countermeasures.

On the eve of declaring a state of emergency in early April, Abe stated at a press conference: “Avigan, which has been approved as a treatment for new strains of influenza and has known side effects, has already been administered to more than 120 cases, and reports have been received that it is effective in improving symptoms. Under the framework of observational research, we plan to expand the use of the drug to patients who wish to use it as much as possible. To that end, we will increase the stockpile of Avigan to three times the current level, up to 2 million people. Companies from all over the country have expressed their cooperation in the production of raw materials necessary for increasing domestic production.”

His message went international as well. In video conference with leaders of China, South Korea, and Southeast Asian nations in mid-April, Abe explained that Japan “will expand clinical research on Avigan, an early treatment drug that can be a trump card in the fight against the virus, in order to prevent the spread of infectious diseases in the future and bring them under control.”

Avigan was promised to a number of nations as a form of much-desired Japanese foreign aid.

The Decline and Fall of Avigan

Doubters of Avigan as the solution to the Covid pandemic were present all along. Many simply observed that the Abe’s declarations and policies were running far ahead of the scientific data.

More quietly, some whispered about the fact that Fujifilm Chairman Shigetaka Komori was very close to Shinzo Abe, and in fact had been one of his key political and financial backers for many years. When asked about this issue by Reuters, Fujifilm spokeswoman Kana Matsumoto responded that “the use of Avigan has nothing to do with the relationship between the prime minister and any particular company.”

In light of the fact that Abe had already been implicated in a series of cronyism scandals, including the rather similar Kake Gakuen affair, such suspicions hardly seemed misplaced.

But Avigan’s true undoing was related to the fundamental issue–it didn’t work very effectively to combat Covid-19 and its developing variants.

By late May, clinical trials were splashing cold water on the prospect that Avigan was the Japanese white knight of the Covid pandemic.

The health ministry was poised to give Avigan a green light for approval, but it was stymied by the fact that all the clinical tests were coming back with results saying it wasn’t an effective drug in combatting Covid-19.

This led the fast track to begin to slow down a bit. Abe reluctantly accepted that the drug couldn’t be approved by the end of May, as he had hoped.

But the administration didn’t give up immediately. In July, Chief Cabinet Secretary (soon to become prime minister) Yoshihide Suga insisted to reporters that “there’s no change in our policy to approve the drug if its efficacy and its safety are confirmed.”

By the autumn, a handful of countries had actually approved the drug in spite of its unproven efficacy. Also, some clinical tests suggested that it did have a marginal degree of effectiveness. Fujifilm responded by officially filing to have Avigan approved in Japan.

The wind really came out of their sails, however, in November when it was announced that US pharmaceutical makers Pfizer and Moderna had developed Covid vaccines that were highly effective.

Abe, who had by this time stepped down, had been correct that medicine could be a game-changer in the battle against the coronavirus, but his dream that friend’s company would be the Japanese global champion were not realized.

Avigan stumbled on for almost two more years, undergoing additional tests but never being approved by the Japanese health ministry as a Covid treatment, before the company itself finally threw in the towel.

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