Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:REGN) announced that its investigating antiviral antibody cocktail, REGN-CoV2, will be added to the UK RECOVERY trial largest randomized trial for potential COVID-19 medicines globally.
REGN-COV2 selected for evaluation in RECOVERY Trial
UK RECOVERY trial will evaluate REGN-COV2 in an open-label third phase trial in hospitalized COVID-19 patients and compare its impact when added to the conventional standard of care against its standard of care. Since April, UK RECOVERY has been assessing different potential COVID-19 medicines. According to Martin Landray, the trial’s co-leader, this will be the first drug they will be evaluating designed for COVID-19. Landray said there was every reason to be optimistic that REGN-COV2 will be a powerful treatment.
The addition of REGN-COV2 treatment to the RECOVERY trial comes as optimism continues to grow about the potential of monoclonal antibodies emerging as effective COVID-19 treatments. To date, the RECOVERY trial has been mostly evaluating existing drugs and whether they can be repurposed to fight COVID-19, and already there are answers to several of the drugs. Trial results in June and September indicated that common steroids such as hydrocortisone and dexamethasone can minimize mortality among critically ill COVID-19 patients. Also, the trial established in June that hydroxychloroquine does not benefit from the treatment of COVID-19.
REGN-COV2 has the potential of helping hospitalized patients
George Yancopoulos, the Chief Scientific Officer and President of Regeneron stated there is an urgent need for a drug to combat COVID-19. Thus well-designed studies evaluating new treatments can help in learning the most effective treatment. He added that their treatment candidate, REGN-COV2, has been designed to target the COVID-19 causing virus, and RECOVERY becomes the fourth late-stage clinical study assessing the drug. George said that this will potentially add to their knowledge about the proprietary antibody cocktail that will help hospitalized coronavirus patients.
REGN-COV2 was picked for evaluation in the RECOVERY trial because of its safety profile in humans. Preclinical data have shown that REGN-COV2 can prevent viral escape mutations, reducing the virus amount in animal studies.
