AFP, published on Tuesday April 28, 2020 at 04:55
An arthritis drug that was closely monitored for potential use against the new coronavirus, Kevzara, has produced disappointing results in clinical trials, its manufacturers said on Monday.
This treatment by the American Regeneron and French Sanofi does not attack the new coronavirus but on the contrary inhibits an abnormal immune response called “cytokine storm”, which causes inflammation of the lungs of the sickest patients, forced to fight against died on artificial respirator.
A first small study in China looked promising. But the drug showed no benefit over a placebo in a larger US study of 276 patients with “serious” disease, that is, people who need oxygen but don’t artificial respirator.
A glimmer of hope, however, appeared for those who were in a “critical” phase, that is to say who needed mechanical ventilation or high flow oxygenation.
In this group, 44 people were on placebo, 94 received a low dose and 88 received a high dose. And 50% of patients on placebo died at the end of the study period, compared to 46% for the lowest dose and 32% for the highest dose.
The trial will continue in this group in a critical phase: “We are awaiting the results of the ongoing phase 3 trial to learn more about Covid-19 and better understand if certain patients can benefit from treatment with Kevzara “said George Yancopoulos, executive and co-founder of Regeneron.
This company is separately developing a set of antibodies that will directly target the virus and which it hopes to advance to human trials by June. These antibodies are obtained by infecting mice whose immune systems have been genetically modified to become similar to that of humans.
Regeneron has already used this system to develop a treatment that has proven effective against the Ebola virus.
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