Tiziana Life Sciences planning phase II clinical trial of monoclonal antibody treatment in patients with moderate to severe COVID-19

Tiziana Life Sciences PLC (NASDAQ:TLSA, LON:TILS) is taking its nasally-administered monoclonal antibody (mAB) into phase II clinical trials in people with moderate to severe COVID-19. This follows an earlier study in Brazil, which showed evidence that Foralumab reduced pulmonary and systemic inflammation and was well tolerated. Nasally-administered Foralumab is thought to work by improving the immune system by stimulating the body’s regulatory T cells. It is also believed to dampen harmful T cell responses in the nasal and respiratory tract, the primary sites of the COVID-19 virus. READ: Tiziana Life Sciences hails positive results from Brazil coronavirus study... As such, Tiziana’s scientists think Foralumab may be effective in treating new coronavirus variants from the UK, Brazil and South Africa because it does not attack the disease directly but modulates its effects on the immune system. This marks it out as different to mAB innovations such as Sorrento Therapeutics’ (NASDAQ:SRNE) COVID-19 treatment, which is directly injected. “We are excited about this next important step in our goal to validate our drug candidate and our novel delivery system as a promising and innovative approach to immunomodulatory therapy for Covid-19 and other mutant variants,” said Tiziana’s chief medical officer, Dr Neil Graham. “By focusing on moderating the inflammatory consequences of the SARS CoV2 virus, we hope to have a therapy that has efficacy irrespective of local viral variants.”