Corvus Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:CRVS) commenced the first phase study investigating a proprietary immunotherapy approach for COVID.19 patients. The new method stimulates a patient’s immune response by activating B cells to enhance the production of antibodies.
Corvus pharmaceutical using B cells memory stimulation to treat COVID-19
The company has already treated the first Cohort of 5 patients enrolled in the study at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia. Corvusanticipates to enrolls around 30 study participants across different study sites in the US.
The company is studying an immunostimulatory monoclonal antibody labeled as CPI-006. It has shown a new possible immunotherapeutic approach to infectious diseases and cancer. CPI-006 has shown both in vivo and in vitro studies in patients with cancer ability to bind to immune cells and stimulation of humoral adaptive response and lymphocyte trafficking that results in the production of antigen-specific IgM and IgG antibodies.
Most importantly, the administration of CPI-006 results enhanced memory levels of B cells responsible for enhanced immunity. The same antibodies production and memory cells to disease-causing pathogens such as the SARS-CoV-2 can offer long-term and immediate clinical benefits to patients that include enhanced long-term protective immunity and shortened recovery duration.
CPI-006 has shown the potential of activating antibody production
So far, CPI-006 has been used to treat around 90 cancer patients in the company’s Phase 1/1b study with a dose of up to 24mg/kg after three weeks. There has been enhanced B cell activation in those patients, and lymphocyte trafficking was seen in patients that received a single dose of around 1mg/kg. The study demonstrated that CPI-006 correlates with an increase in memory B cells and new B cell clones.
Richard Miller, the CEO and President of Corvus, indicated that the B cell-activating monoclonal antibody has the potential of being a COVID-19 treatment because of the ability to activate anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies production. He added that the company’s studies have shown the important biological mechanism behind this approach, and they are ready to use it in the treatment of COVID-19.
