As we move closer to 2020, the various COVID-19 related treatments that have been developed are close to being finished. While the earliest vaccines being worked on right now still need a bit more time before they’re available for widespread use, one pharmaceutical giant, Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY), has asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for early approval for its new antibody-based treatment for emergency, immediate use.
At the moment, the only other major treatment current approved in such a manner is remdesivir, an antiviral drug developed by Gilead. However, while remdesivir is focused more on treating patients with severe symptoms who are at risk of potentially passing away, Eli Lilly’s drug, called LY-CoV555, would target patients with less severe patients.
U.S. health regulators have already been looking into Lilly’s antibody-drug. The National Institutes of Health had already begun studies regarding the drug with COVID-19 patients that are currently hospitalized. According to new clinical data, the rate of hospitalized COVID-19 patients that took the drug were only at 0.9%, in comparison to the 5.8% reported from the placebo group. Its this new data that Eli Lilly hopes will be enough to secure emergency FDA approval.
“Our teams have worked tirelessly the last seven months to discover and develop these potential antibody treatments. We believe the data generated to date provide sufficient evidence that both monotherapy and combination therapy may be effective to treat COVID-19 in patients with a high risk for serious outcomes,” said Daniel Skovronsky on Wednesday, Lilly’s chief scientific officer and president of Lilly Research Laboratories. “Lilly is diligently working with regulators around the world to make these treatments available.”
Antibody-based treatments might be relatively newer in comparison to other types of treatments, like vaccines and antivirals. However, antibody-treatments have shown significant promise so far with reasonably strong clinical data to back up the validity of these treatments. As it turned out, President Trump was injected with another antibody treatment by another company recently during his COVID-19 diagnosis.
Eli Lilly went on to say that it expects to be able to produce around 100,000 doses of LY-CoV555 by the end of the year. While the company’s CEO, David Ricks, said that he hasn’t set a specific price point in mind for the treatment, the plan remains to keep the cost “very low” so that it’s available for anyone who is in need. This is quite common for most pharmaceutical companies working on COVID-19 treatments, with most of these businesses have decided to price their treatments at an extremely low cost.
Shares of Eli Lilly were up around 5% over the course of the day following the announcement. Unlike some other large pharmaceutical companies which have soared amidst this pandemic, Eli Lilly’s stock hasn’t done particularly well so far this year, up less than 10% since the beginning of January, somewhat underperforming the markets.
Eli Lilly Company Profile
Eli Lilly is a drug company with a focus on neuroscience, endocrinology, oncology, and immunology. Lilly’s key products include Alimta and Verzenio for cancer; Jardiance, Trulicity, Humalog, and Humulin for diabetes; and Taltz and Olumiant for immunology. – Warrior Trading News
