StockMarketWire.com - Clinical stage biotherapeutics company PureTech Health has announced plans to advance its product candidate LYT-100 (deupirfenidone) as a potential treatment for serious respiratory complications that persist following the resolution of the COVID-19 infection and will begin a global trial later this year.
The company is set to begin a global, randomised, placebo-controlled trial in the third quarter of 2020 and will evaluate LYT-100 in non-critical COVID-19 patients with respiratory complications, with patients continuing treatment for up to three months.
PureTech Health said its trial is expected to enrol approximately 150 patients, with a primary endpoint measuring pulmonary function testing.
The trial will also assess exploratory endpoints including pharmacokinetics, acute inflammatory biomarkers, hospitalisation events, imaging and patient-reported outcomes.
It expects to announce topline results from the trial in mid-2021.
PureTech Health said its wholly-owned clinical-stage product candidate LYT-100 is an orally administered anti-inflammatory and anti-fibrotic with the potential to treat a range of lung complications, including those resulting from COVID-19.
Member of the PureTech R&D Committee and MD, former chief of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital Dennis Ausiello said: 'Hundreds of clinical trials are underway to combat COVID-19, but the vast majority are focused on vaccines or the acute treatment of severe patients.
'As we learn more about the full impact of COVID-19 on the body, we're seeing post-recovery, longer-term pulmonary dysfunction similar to that observed following infection with other coronaviruses, including SARS and MERS.'
Ausiello added: 'In fact, emerging data suggest that a high proportion of COVID-19 patients are at risk of impaired lung function and fibrosis after recovery, as well as during acute infection.
'With more than five million documented infections to date worldwide, there is a clear and urgent need for therapeutics to address the longer-term sequalae of COVID-19.'
At 8:22am: [LON:PRTC] Puretech Health PLC share price was +2p at 252p
Story provided by StockMarketWire.com
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