San Mateo County Company At Center Of Test To Treat Coronavirus

FOSTER CITY,CA – A new drug manufactured by a San Mateo County-based pharmaceutical company is being tested as a possible treatment for the novel coronavirus in the United States and in China, ABC7 reports.

Remdesivir was originally developed by Gilead Sciences, headquartered in Foster City, as a treatment for Ebola.

The drug has been used in clinical tests on animals with promising results treating Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), both of which are caused by other coronaviruses, according to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is part of the National Institutes of Health.

NAID is the regulatory sponsor of the first clinical trial in the United States evaluating an experimental treatment for COVID-19, the respiratory illness first detected in December 2019 in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, according to the NIH.

NIAID Director and U.S. Coronavirus Task Force member Anthony S. Fauci described the need for a safe and effective treatment for COVID-19 as urgent.

“Although remdesivir has been administered to some patients with COVID-19, we do not have solid data to indicate it can improve clinical outcomes,” Fauci said. “A randomized, placebo-controlled trial is the gold standard for determining if an experimental treatment can benefit patients.”

University of Nebraska Medical Center professor Andre Kalil, M.D. is leading the randomized, controlled clinical trial to evaluate the safety and efficacy of remdesivir.

The first trial participant is an American adult who volunteered to participate in the study. He was repatriated after being quarantined on the Diamond Princess cruise ship that docked in Yokohama, Japan.

Read more at ABC7 and the National Institutes of Health.

For more information about the trial visit ClinicalTrials.gov.