Human testing starts for 1st possible new medicine 'specifically designed to attack' coronavirus

Eli Lilly and Company has announced the start of human testing in the "world's first study of a potential antibody treatment designed to fight COVID-19."

The company on Monday said the first patients have been dosed as it tests a potential antibody treatment for COVID-19 in what Stat News described as a "milestone." Eli Lilly touted this as the "first potential new medicine specifically designed to attack" the coronavirus. The study will focus on determining the drug's safety in patients hospitalized with COVID-19, and the company is expecting results by the end of June; it then aims to test among non-hospitalized patients.

"Ultimately, what we would hope is that this would be an effective treatment that would provide very strongly neutralizing antibodies to lower the virus and help patients recover," Mark Mulligan, who is working on the study, told Stat News.

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The company also looks to determine whether the drug can be used for prevention, which The Wall Street Journal notes is an "approach that could serve as a bridge toward curbing the pandemic until a successful vaccine is developed." According to Stat News, the study "will only test the drug for obvious side effects," and it will be given to 32 patients.

If this potential treatment "becomes part of the near-term solution for COVID-19," president of Lilly Research Laboratories Daniel Skovronsky said in a statement, "we want to be ready to deliver it to patients as quickly as possible, with the goal of having several hundred thousand doses available by the end of the year." Skovronsky also told Stat News, "I hope there will be multiple successful [antibody drugs]. I expect there will be."