(Reuters) – AstraZeneca Plc said on Tuesday that it would start a clinical trial to assess the potential of Calquence in the treatment of the exaggerated immune response associated with COVID-19 infection in severely ill patients.
Calquence is a BTK inhibitor and currently used to treat certain types of blood cancers.
The drug has already been approved for the treatment of adult patients with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia in the United States and a number of other countries.
The announcement from AstraZeneca comes at a time when drugmakers around the world have been forced to pause or slow down clinical trials for other disease areas, as they focus on testing potential treatments for the fast-spreading coronavirus.
The goal of the trial is to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of adding the drug to best supportive care to reduce mortality and the need for assisted ventilation in patients with life-threatening COVID-19 symptoms, the British drugmaker said.
The trial is expected to open for enrolment in the coming days in the United States and several countries in Europe, AstraZeneca said.
Earlier this month, AstraZeneca and its domestic rival GlaxoSmithKline PLC entered into a deal to set up a testing laboratory to aid in COVID-19 testing with Cambridge University.
(Reporting by Aakash Jagadeesh Babu in Bengaluru; Editing by Patrick Graham and Sherry Jacob-Phillips)
