HOW A CANCER DRUG IN COVID-19 PATIENTS
Source: indianexpress
Introduction
A phase-3 trial with the cancer drug- Sabizabulin, a cancer-curing drug, has shown it cuts the risk of death by 1/4th in patients hospitalized with moderate Covid-19.
Drug
- Sabizabulin works by targeting a process called microtubule trafficking, which has both anti-inflammatory & anti-viral activity.
- The drug was shown effective against many tumour types including castration-resistant prostate cancer, triple-negative breast cancer resistant to anthracyclines and taxanes, ovarian cancer, cervical cancer, lung cancer, melanoma, leukaemia, glioma, and pancreatic cancer.
- The drug looked at all-cause mortality, the proportion of Covid-19 patients who died during the study period up to the 60th day compared to placebo in the intent-to-treat population.
- Patients who had a baseline oxygen saturation level of 94% or lower on room air, with asthma, chronic lung disease, diabetes,
hypertension, severe obesity, or immunocompromised status.
- Pregnant women, breastfeeding women and patients on ventilation plus additional organ support like long-term pressers, renal replacement therapy, and extracorporeal membrane oxygen were excluded from this experiment.
Results
- Cumulative mortality analysis showed that the reduction in deaths with Sabizabulin started within the first week of treatment and the relative reduction in deaths reached 51.8% on day 29.
- Sabizabulin treatment resulted in 24.9% point absolute reduction and 55.2% relative reduction in deaths compared with placebo, among the subjects who were at risk high risk for acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and death.
- Beneficial effects of Sabizabulin were observed starting as early as day 3 after dosing on day 15, statistically significant reductions in mortality were observed with the beneficial effect maintained through day 29.
- The mortality rate was observed to be 17% in the Sabizabulin group compared to 35.3% in the placebo arm.
- This says that the drug could reduce the risk of mortality by 18.3% by 29th
- From 29-60 days, the death rate increased by 9.8% in the placebo group and by 3.2% in the Sabizabulin group.
- This indicates the drug could reduce mortality risk by 24.9% when compared with the placebo group.
Impact on Hospitalisation
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The study found a 43% relative reduction in days in ICU, with an average of 17.4 days spent on Sabizabulin when compared with 30.8 days spent on the placebo arm subject.
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