Press Release

Clinical trial on ‘Alvesco’ will be initiated in Korea, for which Institut Pasteur Korea has confirmed its efficacy for COVID-19 in in-vitro cell culture

2020-03-29
Clinical trial on Alvesco will be initiated in Korea, for which Institut Pasteur Korea has confirmed its efficacy for COVID19 in in-vitro cell culture
 
March 29, 2020, Pangyo – Institut Pasteur Korea(CEO: Wang-Shick Ryu) announced that a clinical trial on 'Alvesco' would be initiated in Korea based on the research results generated by the Institute.
 
A sponsor-investigator trial on Alvesco has been approved by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. Approvals on clinical trials usually take 30 days. However, through preliminary consultation and expedited review, the approval was granted only a day after the application was submitted.
 
※ Sponsor-investigator trials: Clinical trials performed by clinical investigators without receiving external requests. They are independent research to find new effect and dose with drugs that that has not been verified for safety and effectiveness or with commercially licensed medicine.
 
The clinical trial is to confirm the clinical efficacy of Alvesco in mild COVID-19 patients and will be conducted on 141 patients.
 
Institut Pasteur Korea has been conducting “Drug Repositioning” research since February with an aim of finding the drugs that can be promptly used for the treatment of COVID-19. Recently, researchers confirmed the efficacy of ciclesonide, a major component of Alvesco. In the research, ciclesonide had similar or superior antiviral activity in cell culture experiments compared to the remdesivir, lopinavir, and chloroquine, which are currently in clinical trials at home and abroad. There are supporting cases reported in Japan related to the use of ciclesonide in which patients have been recovered after administration of ciclesonide. The Japanese Association for Infectious Diseases is also pursuing observational research on ciclesonide.
 
Institut Pasteur Korea will continue the 'Drug Repositioning' campaign to discover additional drugs with excellent efficacy for COVID-19. Through close cooperation with related organizations such as Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology and The Korean Society of Infectious Diseases, the Institute will provide valuable research results for clinical application.