BUFFALO, N.Y. —
Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center has announced that the FDA has approved a treatment to see how two drugs can help cancer patients who are also fighting COVID-19.
According to the hospital, the FDA has approved a clinical trial to test out a combination of rintatolimod and interferon alfa, drugs given to cancer patients to boost their immune system.
The theory is that combinations of certain immunomodulators or immune-modifying drugs, might help patients in the early stages of COVID-19, and possibly prevent their symptoms from becoming more serious.
“This is exciting and noteworthy science,” said Roswell Park President and CEO Candace S. Johnson, Ph.D. “It’s a rare example of a concept for COVID-19 therapy that emerged from academic researchers rather than a pharmaceutical company, and it was a Roswell Park team that looked at the way these two drugs work and saw a possibility for them to enhance each other’s effects — first against cancer and now as a possible treatment for COVID-19.”
The two drugs will be given to cancer patients who are experiencing mild to moderate cases of COVID-19, Roswell said. Forty patients at the cancer center will participate in the trial.
“We believe that the two agents to be tested in our trial, given together, can activate the missing interferon response in COVID-19-infected cells,” said Dr. Pawel Kalinski, the scientific lead on the study. “This would induce protective interferons and other antiviral factors in adjacent cells, stopping the virus from spreading in patients’ bodies and generating a synergistic effect that could help cancer patients with mild or moderate COVID-19 to fight the virus before it causes serious damage to the lungs or other organs.”
The hospital said patients with cancer and COVID-19 are at five times the risk of other severe illnesses. There are currently no FDA-approved drugs for treating patients with COVID-19.
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