FDA approves new COVID-19 immunotherapy clinical trial in Seattle

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The Federal Drug Administration has approved a new clinical trial using investigational immunotherapy to treat novel COVID-19 that will be coordinated by the Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI) in Seattle.

Researchers at IDRI emphasized that while many anti-viral treatments are being studied, the potentials of immunotherapy, the treatment of disease by activating or suppressing the body's immune system, in regards to treating the virus are less known.

"To date, efforts to treat COVID-19 cases have been primarily focused on antiviral medications," explains IDRI's CEO Corey Casper in a statement. "While these are important, patients with serious disease may not respond completely to antiviral medications because they are experiencing damage already inflicted on the body’s vital organs."

The treatment involves administering white blood cells known as natural killer cells, which have previously been used to treat leukemia and multiple myeloma, to human subjects. The study comes after low natural killer cell counts were discovered in patients with severe cases of COVID-19.

The human trial will involve 100 patients diagnosed with the COVID-19 infection causing pneumonia and will be a collaboration between IDRI and the New Jersey-based Celularity Inc.

Casper, who is also a Clinical Professor of Global Health and Medicine at the University of Washington, believes the findings of this clinical trial could potentially become treatments in the case of future pandemics.

"The hypothesis is that administering NK cells to patients with moderate to severe COVID-19 will allow the immune cells to 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,” noted Casper.

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