On May 5, 2020, the HonorHealth Research Institute and HonorHealth announced the successful enrollment on a novel combination of atovaquone and azithromycin in patients with moderate-to-severe COVID-19 infection. The clinical trial, conducted in collaboration with TGen was funded as an investigator-initiated clinical trial by HonorHealth Research Institute. This was one of 10 clinical trials that the HonorHealth Research Institute worked on related to COVID-19 to understand the biology, spread and treatment of COVID-19.

The combination of atovaquone and azithromycin has the advantage of less risk of cardiac side effects compared to other potential COVID-19 treatments. Laboratory modeling suggests that atovaquone may be an active drug in the treatment of COVID-19 and its combination with azithromycin, studied in the rare infectious disease babesiosis, makes this an intriguing combination to study in COVID-19. HonorHealth will be enrolling approximately 25 patients into the study, which enrolled its first patient on April 29.

The study will analyze interval nasopharyngeal swabs during treatment to quantitate COVID-19 viral load as well as assess additional clinical and laboratory determinants to determine response to therapy.  Additional laboratory studies performed by TGen’s Pathogen and Microbiome Division, its infectious disease branch, will assess antibody production as well as genomic sequencing of the virus’ RNA to gain a better understanding of the COVID-19 virus.