On Apr. 29, 2020, Emory University played a leading role in the government-sponsored clinical trial of the COVID-19 drug remdesivir – Emory and an affiliated hospital enrolled 103 participants, more than any other institution in the world.An independent data and safety monitoring board overseeing the trial noted that remdesivir was better than placebo from the perspective of the primary endpoint, time to recovery, a metric often used in influenza trials.

Remdesivir was described by Anthony Fauci, MD, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), as the new standard of care in treating patients hospitalized with COVID-19. It is the first agent with demonstrated efficacy in the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infections and COVID-19 disease.

According to preliminary data from the trial, hospitalized people with advanced COVID-19 and lung involvement who received remdesivir recovered faster than similar people who received placebo.

The randomized, controlled trial involved 1,063 participants and began on Feb. 21. The trial is known as the Adaptive COVID-19 Treatment Trial, or ACTT, and sponsored by the NIAID. A total of 68 sites joined the study — 47 in the United States and 21 in countries in Europe and Asia.

Emory and an affiliated hospital enrolled 103 participants, more than any other institution in the world. The large Emory team is led by Aneesh Mehta, MD, and Nadine Rouphael, MD, both associate professors in the Division of Infectious Diseases.