Months into the global pandemic, the world is up to 23.9 million cases, with 820,286 unfortunate deaths. In the U.S., we're up to 5.78 million infections. In Brazil, nearly 3.7 million. In India, 3.23 million. In Russia, 968,297, and in South Africa, 613,017. While no company has a magic cure for the pandemic just yet, many are racing toward once that's cost-effective and safe. " As worldwide cases will pass 24 million this week, and likely today, effective cures are the key for healthcare, for the global travel and tourism, for business events, and for the general service industry. Both vaccines and FDA approved therapeutics would be a game changer worldwide," reports Forbes.
In addition, a new study from the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, as noted by Deseret.com, says that if 75% of people were to get the vaccine, it needs to have an efficacy of at least 70% to prevent a pandemic. "If it reaches 80%, then the current pandemic would be eliminated completely. If 60% get the vaccine, then we would need an 80% effective rate to stop an epidemic and a 100% success rate to end the pandemic."
With that in mind, some of the top companies to keep on radar include Revive Therapeutics (CSE:RVV)(OTC:RVVTF), CytoDyn Inc. (OTC:CYDY), Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE), Novavax Inc. (NASDAQ:NVAX), and BioNTech SE (NASDAQ:BNTX).
Revive Therapeutics Ltd. (CSE:RVV)(OTC:RVVTF) BREAKING NEWS: Revive Therapeutics Ltd., a specialty life sciences company focused on the research and development of therapeutics for medical needs and rare disorders, is pleased to announce that following the U.S. Food & Drug Administration approval to proceed with the Company's Phase 3 clinical trial to evaluate the safety and efficacy of Bucillamine in patients with mild-moderate COVID-19, the Company has submitted its clinical trial protocol for independent Institutional Review Board approval. Additionally, the Company is exploring the FDA Expanded Access Program, also referred to as the Compassionate Use Program, that can provide access to the Company's investigational drug, Bucillamine, for people who meet the protocol criteria of the COVID-19 study. Revive expects to have patients enrolled in September 2020.
"We are continuing to make strong progress in our Phase 3 clinical trial in COVID-19 and with the submission of the Phase 3 study protocol to Advarra, a premier IRB services company in North America, for review and approval, it will enable us to select key clinical sites in the U.S. and proceed with site initiation visits to allow for the selected U.S. clinical locations to enroll patients," said Michael Frank, Revive's Chief Executive Officer. "We are also exploring the Compassionate Use Program as an alternate option for U.S. licensed physicians to request Bucillamine for their patients who have been diagnosed with COVID-19."
According to the FDA, expanded access programs provide a way for a patient to receive an investigational drug for a serious disease or condition. These investigational drugs are often made available when there are no comparable or satisfactory alternative therapies to treat the disease or condition, where patient enrollment in clinical trials is not possible, the potential patient benefit justifies the potential risk of treatment and when providing the investigational drug will not interfere with clinical trials that could support the drug's marketing approval for the treatment indication.
About the Phase 3 Confirmatory Clinical Study
The Phase 3 confirmatory clinical study titled, "A Multi-Center, Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Study of Bucillamine in Patients with Mild-Moderate COVID-19", will enroll up to 1,000 patients that will be randomized 1:1:1 to receive Bucillamine 100 mg three times a day, Bucillamine 200 mg TID or placebo TID for up to 14 days. The primary objective is to compare the frequency of hospitalization or death in patients with mild-moderate COVID-19 receiving Bucillamine therapy with those receiving placebo. The primary endpoint is the proportion of patients meeting a composite endpoint of hospitalization or death from the time of the first dose through Day 28 following randomization. Efficacy will be assessed by comparing clinical outcomes (death or hospitalization), disease severity using the 8-category NIAID COVID ordinal scale, supplemental oxygen use, and progression of COVID‑19 between patients receiving standard-of-care plus Bucillamine (high dose and/or low dose) and patients receiving standard-of-care plus placebo. Safety will be assessed by reported pre-treatment adverse events and treatment-emergent adverse events (including serious adverse events and adverse events of special interest), laboratory values (hematology and serum chemistry), vital signs (heart rate, respiratory rate, and temperature), and peripheral oxygen saturation.
An interim analysis will be performed by an Independent Data and Safety Monitoring Board ("DSMB") after 210 patients have been treated and followed up for 28 days after randomization. The better performing Bucillamine dose at the interim analysis will be selected and patients will then be randomized 2:1 to the selected Bucillamine dose or placebo. Additional interim analyses will be performed after 400, 600, and 800 patients have reached this same post-treatment timepoint. The independent DSMB will actively monitor interim data for the ongoing safety of patients and will recommend continuation, stopping or changes to the conduct of the study based on the interim analysis reports.
The Company is not making any express or implied claims that its product has the ability to eliminate or cure COVID-19 (SARS-2 Coronavirus) at this time.
Scientific Rationale of Bucillamine for COVID-19
Preclinical and clinical studies have demonstrated that reactive oxygen species contribute to the destruction and programmed cell death of pulmonary epithelial cells.1 N-acetyl-cysteine (NAC) has been shown to significantly attenuate clinical symptoms in respiratory viral infections in animals and humans, primarily via donation of thiols to increase antioxidant activity of cellular glutathione2,3,4,5. Bucillamine (N-(mercapto-2-methylpropionyl)-l-cysteine) has a well-known safety profile and is prescribed in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis in Japan and South Korea for over 30 years. Bucillamine, a cysteine derivative with two thiol groups, has been shown to be 16 times more potent as a thiol donor in vivo than NAC 6. The drug is non-toxic with high cellular permeability. The basis of the clinical study will analyze if Bucillamine has the potential, via increasing glutathione activity and other anti-inflammatory activity, to lessen the destructive consequences of SARS-CoV2 infection in the lungs and attenuate the clinical course of COVID-19.
Other related developments from around the markets include:
CytoDyn Inc. (OTC:CYDY), a late-stage biotechnology company developing leronlimab (PRO 140), a CCR5 antagonist with the potential for multiple therapeutic indications, announced the Company has reached the requisite number of enrolled patients in its Phase 3 trial for COVID-19 patients with severe-to-critical symptoms to perform an interim analysis following the 28-day phase of the trial. This Phase 3 trial is a two-arm, randomized, double blind, placebo controlled, adaptive design multicenter study to evaluate the safety and efficacy of leronlimab in patients with severe-to-critical symptoms of respiratory illness caused by COVID-19. Patients are randomized to receive weekly doses of 700 mg leronlimab or placebo, administered via weekly subcutaneous injection for two weeks. The study has three phases lasting 28 days: Screening Period, Treatment Period, and Follow-Up Period. The primary outcome measured in this study is: all-cause mortality at Day 28. Secondary outcomes measured are: (1) all-cause mortality at Day 14, (2) change in clinical status of subject at Day 14, (3) change in clinical status of subject at Day 28, and (4) change from baseline in Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) score at Day 14. Recently, the Data Safety Monitoring Committee ("DSMC") completed its first safety review of patients in the Phase 3 trial and reported it saw no cause to modify the study. The DSMC reviewed safety data from 149 of the 169 patients enrolled at the time of their review. The DSMC did not raise any concerns regarding safety and recommended the trial continue as planned.
Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) and BioNTech shared additional Phase 1 safety and immunogenicity data from their ongoing U.S. study of the BNT162 mRNA-based vaccine program against SARS-CoV-2, which has advanced into Phase 2/3 evaluation. The newly released manuscript describes key safety and immunogenicity data from the U.S. Phase 1 trial for the BNT162b2 vaccine candidate, which at30μg recorded 7 days after the second dose elicited SARS-CoV-2-neutralizing geometric mean titers (GMTs) in younger adults (18-55 years of age) that were 3.8 times the GMT of a panel of 38 sera of SARS-CoV2 convalescent patients, and in older adults (65-85 years of age) the vaccine candidate elicited a neutralizing GMT 1.6 times the GMT of the same panel, demonstrating strong immunogenicity in younger and older adults. Further, across all populations, BNT162b2 administration was well tolerated with mild to moderate fever in fewer than 20% of the participants. As previously announced, these data informed the companies' decision to advance a 2-dose regimen of the 30µg dose level of BNT162b2, which encodes an optimized SARS-CoV-2 full-length spike glycoprotein (S), into a Phase 2/3 evaluation.
Novavax Inc. (NASDAQ:NVAX), a late stage biotechnology company developing next-generation vaccines for serious infectious diseases, announced that the first volunteers have been enrolled in the Phase 2 portion of its ongoing clinical trial to evaluate the immunogenicity and safety of NVX-CoV2373, Novavax' COVID-19 vaccine candidate. The Phase 2 clinical trial expands on the age range of the Phase 1 portion by including older adults 60-84 years of age as approximately 50 percent of the trial's population. NVX‑CoV2373 is a stable, prefusion protein made using Novavax' nanoparticle technology and includes Novavax' proprietary Matrix‑M™ adjuvant. "We expect this Phase 2 portion of the trial to expand on the encouraging Phase 1 safety and immunogenicity data for NVX-CoV2373, and we will now look for robust immune responses in older adults," said Gregory M. Glenn, M.D., President, Research and Development at Novavax. "Our Phase 3 trial of NanoFlu, which we reported in March of 2020, provided us with a deep understanding of the unique needs of older adults, who are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. We know that the world is closely watching all of these trials, and we anticipate interim data from this trial in the fourth quarter of this year."
BioNTech SE (NASDAQ:BNTX), a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on patient-specific immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer and infectious diseases, provided an update on its corporate progress and reported financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2020. "We made significant progress in the second quarter toward our goal of advancing our oncology programs and toward bringing a COVID-19 vaccine to market as quickly as possible. I am incredibly proud of our team, who has worked tirelessly to initiate our BNT162 Phase 2b/3 trial in record time and put us in a position to seek regulatory review as early as October of this year, if our trials are successful," said Ugur Sahin, BioNTech's CEO and Co-founder. "In addition, we have significantly strengthened our balance sheet, providing financial resources to advance our broad pipeline of novel immunotherapies targeting oncology and infectious disease."
Legal Disclaimer / Except for the historical information presented herein, matters discussed in this article contains forward-looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. Winning Media is not registered with any financial or securities regulatory authority and does not provide nor claims to provide investment advice or recommendations to readers of this release. For making specific investment decisions, readers should seek their own advice. Revive Therapeutics has paid three thousand five hundred dollars for advertising and marketing services to be distributed by Winning Media. Winning Media is only compensated for its services in the form of cash-based compensation. Winning Media owns ZERO shares of Revive Therapeutics. Please click here for full disclaimer.
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