NorthWest Biotherapeutics Inc (NWBO)

[longfellow95]

I know very little about Ivermectin, other than it's an already approved anti-parisitic, used for scabies and rosacea, and head lice, and many third world parasitic diseases.

In vitro studies have shown it to be effective against Covid, but more human studies for Covid are ideally required.
There are probably many already approved drugs that can exert anti-viral effect on this virus.
At a quick glance, it appears to be getting similar derogatory reporting in the West to hydroxychloroquine.

This is an example:-

The current approach to finding a viable therapy for the SARS-CoV-2 is to repurpose existing drugs. All over the world, ivermectin came into widespread use of off-label in response to the news of the in vitro success against the virus.

At a dose of 150 µg/kg, observation of 52 patients on mechanical ventilation appeared to show clinical benefit with the drug in contrast to over 1,900 patients on conventional treatment. Though these results need to be analyzed to rule out confounding factors and biases, on the surface, they would seem to suggest that very low lung concentrations of ivermectin are able to inhibit the virus.

In other words, even when the ivermectin concentration is not anywhere near the IC50, it appears to have antiviral activity. This could suggest that the lung distribution or accumulation of this drug is far greater in humans than in cattle.

In contrast, the concentrations of ivermectin reported inhibiting the coronavirus in vitro were markedly higher than those achieved in human lung or plasma with the approved doses of ivermectin. As a result, say the researchers, “the likelihood of a successful clinical trial using the approved dose of ivermectin is low.”

This should be a warning to conduct in vitro studies of repurposed drugs at concentrations that are safe and tolerable in humans.

In other words it appears to work, it's safe, but the headline of the article is:-

"The approved dose of ivermectin alone not useful in treating COVID-19".

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200427/Ivermectin-alone-not-useful-in-treating-COVID-19.aspx

It's now a cheap generic, so no money for Big Pharma.

The better it works, the more likely it is to get a bad press.
Just like Hydroxychloroquine.

Peru and Bolivia have approved Ivermectin's use for Covid this month.

From Wiki:-

The wholesale cost in the developing world is about US$0.12 for a course of treatment as of 2014.[10] This is down from an initial cost of US$6 proposed by Merck in 1987.[60] The company however has donated 100s of millions of courses of treatments since 1988 in more than 30 countries.[60] Between 1995 and 2010 the program using donated ivermectin to prevent river blindness is estimated to have prevented 7 million years of disability well costing US$257 million.

Actually, here is a good article about the history of Ivermectin and its widespread therapeutic uses around the world:-

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043740/