Buffalo, NY (WBEN) - Just one week in to a clinical trial to see if an anti-inflammatory drug can help Coronavirus patients, Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center says they are seeing encouraging results.
Doctors at Roswell Park and the University at Buffalo have been working to see if the the anti-inflammatory agent sarilumab can help critical COVID-19 patients.
“One patient has been treated (when the trial first began last week), and over the past week, we’ve added three other sites to the trial with Buffalo General, ECMC, and Millard Fillmore Suburban,” said Roswell Park Chief Clinical Operations Officer Shirley Johnson.
Johnson said it’s still too early to know any results, but Dr. Igor Puzanov, who is leading the trial, has been pleased with the results. Local results will not be known in their entirety until the full international study is published.
The promising news is preliminary, but the trial itself has fast-moving.
“To see a trial that began with researchers thinking about it on a Saturday morning, seeing it come to fruition with all of the science that has to be vetted out and approvals that have to be made, to have that up and going within two or three weeks is just remarkable in the world of clinical trials.”