Northwestern, UIC to take part in global clinical trial for potential COVID-19 treatment

Northwestern Medicine and the University of Illinois at Chicago are participating in a global clinical drug trial for an experimental antiviral drug to treat COVID-19.

The drug, Remdesivir, was developed to treat Ebola and has subsequently been found in animals to have antiviral activity against other coronaviruses.

“I think it’s fantastic this trial is off the ground,” said Dr. Babafemi Taiwo, chief of infectious diseases at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Northwestern Medicine. “It puts something in our hands that we can investigate in a rigorous fashion in the quest for therapies that may be effective and widely adopted to treat the pandemic.“

Participants in the trial receive either a placebo drug or Remdesivir intravenously once a day for a maximum of 10 days. If a patient recovers sooner, the treatment is stopped. The patient will be evaluated for 30 days.

Roughly 50 sites around the country will enroll 440 patients in the trial. The trial is sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases/Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health.

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