On Nov. 11, 2020, Sorrento Therapeutics announced that it was filing an investigational new drug application (IND) for intranasal (IN) COVI-DROPS (STI-2099) to study the safety and pharmacokinetics in both healthy volunteers and patients with mild COVID-19.

In preclinical studies, high potency STI-2099 demonstrated a 100% neutralizing effect (both in vitro and in vivo) and at a very low dose prevented SARS-CoV-2 from infecting healthy cells and causing COVID-19-like disease in Syrian golden hamsters.