A novel combination of atovaquone, a drug used to treat malaria and azithromycin, an antibiotic effective against a variety of bacterial infections, is being tested in clinical trials to treat moderately to severely sick COVID-19 patients at three HonorHealth hospitals in Scottsdale and Phoenix.
Officials say this is the first such trial in the United States and the first trial made available to patients in Arizona that involves this specific combination of therapies.
“We are proud to be supporting this ‘homegrown’ innovation here at the institute, where we have been working with other front line providers, scientists and experts across the globe to bring several COVID-19 trials up in record time to support our patients and providers amid this pandemic,” said HonorHealth Research Institute Chief Operating Officer Kiran Avancha, Ph.D., R.Ph.
Doctors anticipate treating 25 patients in the trial. They say the first, a severely ill woman, is currently receiving the drugs.
Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) North Director and Associate Professor Dave Engelthaler, Ph.D., says the hope is that the combination of drugs will prevent COVID-19 from infecting new cells in patients and use the body’s immune system to help clear out the virus.
“For this particular virus and disease, it’s not reacting to everybody the same way. We can’t hope to find a magic bullet, but with innovations like this, we are going to find bullets. We need to use them until we can get an effective vaccine in place,” he said in a news conference with HonorHealth doctors. “This Arizona innovation of collaboration, repurposing drugs and next generation technology will hopefully give us a few more bullets to be used.”
Officials say atovaquone and azithromycin already are approved by the Federal Drug Administration. They are expected to be easier on patients and pose less risks of cardiac side effects than other potential COVID-19 treatments.
Co-principal investigator of the trial, HonorHealth Research Institute Medical Director Michael Gordon, M.D., says doctors and scientists don’t understand the virus and can’t explain the difference between patients suffering from moderate to severe symptoms and those who are less sick.
“A big challenge is about 80% of individuals develop flu-like symptoms for up to two weeks. Most of those go on to do well. But a subset, those at high risk who are over the age of 60, have diabetes, untreated hypertension and underlying illnesses that could suppress the immune system, about 15% of patients have a much more malignant progression.”
Additional laboratory studies performed by TGen’s Pathogen and Microbiome Division in Flagstaff, its infectious disease branch, will be able to quantify the virus by counting the COVID-19 load in patients and measure antibody production. “We can learn more about the immune response and, through genetic sequencing, see how the virus might be changing during the infection and if the treatment is having an effect on the virus in the patient,” said Engelthaler.
As more people are tested for COVID-19, researchers expect more will be diagnosed with a milder case, a slightly severe flu-like illness. “Those are the people we are considering extending the study to,” said Co-Principal Investigator Sunil Sharma, M.D., FACP, MBA, who has dual appointments at HonorHealth Research Institute and TGen. “My gut feeling is there’s going to be a lot of different options that we’ll be reassessing for the best chance of helping patients.” FBN
By Bonnie Stevens, FBN