Aerpio Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Quantum Leap Healthcare Collaborative? (Quantum Leap) announced dosing of the first patient with razuprotafib in the I-SPY COVID Trial (NCT04488081), a phase 2 platform trial aimed at improving treatment of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) in severely ill COVID-19 (adult) patients. 

"Finding an effective therapeutic agent to treat patients who get critically ill in response to the COVID-19 infection is of utmost importance regardless of whether we have a vaccine," said Laura Esserman , the founder of the I-SPY programs. "Our group is focused on screening promising agents and quickly identifying therapies that work. Razuprotafib was selected because of its potential to reverse the lung damage by activating Tie2 and stabilizing the leaky blood vessels that cause some of the damage. This has the potential to prevent death and improve time to recovery, which is what we need for this pandemic and any other that comes along in the future."

"We are extremely pleased by the rapid progress in study site selection and patient screening in this trial," said Joseph Gardner, President and Founder. "We believe that razuprotafib has the potential to benefit critically ill COVID-19 patients, and hope to provide additional updates on progress before the end of the year."

The I-SPY COVID TRIAL, is an adaptive platform trial sponsored by Quantum Leap Healthcare Collaborative. The goal of the trial is to rapidly screen, in parallel, multiple promising agents in order to identify drugs that will have a high impact on reducing mortality, and avoid or reduce the duration of mechanical ventilation for critically-ill COVID-19 patients. This study arm will evaluate razuprotafib's potential to sufficiently stabilize the pulmonary vasculature, in order to slow or prevent the progression of COVID-19 associated pulmonary pathology, decrease the need for ventilator support, and reduce mortality.