A Seattle-based medical research company has just got the green light to conduct human tests on what it hopes will be a treatment for the COVID-19 disease.
The FDA has approved the new trial for the joint venture between Seattle’s Infectious Disease Research Institute and New Jersey’s Celularity Inc., which has pioneered an investigational immunotherapy, the companies say.
“The treatment is based on the administration of immune cells known as Natural Killer or ‘NK cells’ which have been safely given in early phase studies to patients for the treatment of leukemia and multiple myeloma,” IDRI officials said in a press release announcing the trial’s approval. “NK cells play a key role in the body’s defense against viral infections, and the severe cases of COVID-19 in the initial patients were associated with low NK cell counts.”
The study will enroll 100 patients who have been diagnosed with pneumonia caused by COVID-19, the study authors said. Those patients will be provided an infusion of the new treatment.
“The hypothesis is that administering NK cells to patients with moderate to severe COVID-19 will allow the immune cells find the sites of active viral infection, kill the virus, and induce a robust immune response that will help heal the damage and control the infection,” says IDRI’s CEO Corey Casper, who is also a Clinical Professor of Global Health and Medicine (Infectious Disease) at the University of Washington.
Casper hopes that beyond a potential treatment for COVID-19 that it may also work to help treat future pandemics.
