South Korea’s Celltrion starts trial of COVID-19 treatment drug
South Korea’s biopharmaceutical company, Celltrion, has announced that it has started clinical trials of an experimental COVID-19 treatment, CT-P63C. The drug is a neutralising antibody treatment that targets the spike protein of the virus, and is being developed in collaboration with the Korea National Institute of Health. The trial will be conducted on around 100 volunteers who have mild or moderate symptoms of COVID-19, and the results are expected in the third quarter of this year. Celltrion also plans to conduct clinical trials for the drug’s efficacy on severe COVID-19 patients in the future. The company previously developed a COVID-19 antibody treatment, which was granted emergency use authorisation in South Korea last year. If the clinical trials for CT-P63C are successful, it could help in treating COVID-19 patients globally.