Abstract
Objective: A new, economical, precise, linear, sensitive, accurate, ultraviolet (UV) spectrophotometric method for the estimation of new antiviral repurposing drug favipiravir as there is no reported simple UV spectrophotometric method for estimation. The efforts were made for development and validation of favipiravir as per ICH guidelines, because drug has a wide scope for formulations to be developed for treating different viruses.
 Methods: This method was developed using ethanol and water as a solvent. Favipiravir showed the absorption maxima at 234 nm. A Shimadzu UV–visible spectrophotometer (UV JAPAN 1801) was used to carry out spectral analysis.
 Results: The developed method was linear for a range of 0–10 μg/ml and displayed a good correlation coefficient of 0.9995. Accuracy of the method was estimated using a recovery study. The amount of drug recovered was found to be in the range of 99.30–99.91%. The % relative standard deviation value of intraday precision was found to be 0.408% and interday precision was found to be in the range of 0.348–0.693%. The % relative standard deviation found to be <2 which are indicative of the precision and reproducibility of the method. Detection limit and quantitation limit were noticed as 0.095 and 0.290, respectively.
 Conclusion: The developed UV spectrophotometric method was validated statistically for linearity, accuracy, precision, and sensitivity and results proved that the method can be employed for routine analysis of favipiravir.
Highlights
Favipiravir is a prodrug derived by chemical modification of the pyrazine moiety of T-1105
Favipiravir is quickly emerging as the top choice for COVID-19 treatment due to the absence of definitive treatment and a lot of emphasis on repurposing of existing drugs because developing a new drug would take years
RNA polymerase is the enzyme which is essential for the virus to make copies of itself in the body
Summary
Favipiravir is a prodrug derived by chemical modification of the pyrazine moiety of T-1105. Favipiravir is quickly emerging as the top choice for COVID-19 treatment due to the absence of definitive treatment and a lot of emphasis on repurposing of existing drugs because developing a new drug would take years. Toyama Chemicals, Japan, initially developed favipiravir for treating influenza. It is 5-fluoro-2-oxo-1H-pyrazine-3-carboxamide [1]. Favipiravir is a viral RNA polymerase inhibitor which prevents replication of the viral genome. RNA polymerase is the enzyme which is essential for the virus to make copies of itself in the body. It selectively targets this enzyme, to inhibit the replication of the virus in the body [2]
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