On Feb. 25, 2020, a University of British Columbia (UBC) researcher was part of an international team working with a biotechnology company on a pilot clinical trial of a potential new treatment for patients with severe coronavirus infections in Guangzhou, China.

Dr. Josef Penninger, director of UBC’s Life Sciences Institute, worked closely with Vienna-based APEIRON Biologics on a randomized, dual-arm trial will treat 28 patients for seven days to determine whether APN01 treatment improves outcomes in patients with severe SARS-CoV-2 infection, the virus that causes COVID-19 disease.

APN01, a drug candidate of APEIRON, is based on previous work in the early 2000s, when Penninger, together with Drs. Arthur Slutsky (University of Toronto) and Chengyu Jiang (Peking Medical Union College), discovered that a protein called ACE2 was the critical receptor for the SARS virus and also protected the lung. During the trial, researchers will assess participants to determine if APN01 reduces the viral load of SARS-CoV-2 virus, as well as the number of days patients endure fever. Data from the trial will be evaluated to determine if there is a need for an additional clinical trial in a larger number of patients.

An international team of Canadian, Chinese, and European experts, including Penninger, co-founder of APEIRON and the APEIRON team, Dr. Liqun Zhang and team of Angalpharma Co., Ltd (Suzhou, China), are coordinating the Chinese clinical trial with the support of dMed Pharmaceutical Co., a CRO team based in China. Drs. Haibo Zhang and Arthur Slutsky at St. Michaels Hospital in Toronto will determine if APN01 improves severe disease of the new coronavirus outbreak.

The trial in China is being led by Dr. Yimin Li, the ICU director who fought the 2003 SARS outbreak Guangdong Province, and Dr. Nanshan Zhong, the Chair of the National COVID-19 Commission in China.