Bukwang Pharmaceutical Completes Patient Recruitment for Phase 2 Clinical Trial of COVID-19 Treatment

Bukwang Pharmaceutical

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Ji-hee] Bukwang Pharmaceutical announced on the 11th that it has completed patient recruitment for the Phase 2 clinical trial of its COVID-19 treatment. The target recruitment number was 80, but a total of 104 patients were actually recruited. Once the follow-up investigation of the last patient is completed and the data is collected, the clinical results will be compiled and discussed with the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety along with the previously conducted clinical results to plan the next steps.

Bukwang Pharmaceutical is developing the antiviral drug Levovir (active ingredient: clevudine), originally developed as a treatment for chronic hepatitis B, as a COVID-19 treatment. Currently, the CLV-203 clinical trial is underway, quantitatively measuring the reduction of the COVID-19 virus through cell culture tests and evaluating efficacy in patients ranging from mild to moderate severity.

In the previous CLV-201 clinical trial, which compared clevudine and placebo in 60 moderate patients, a trend of virus reduction was observed in the Levovir treatment group compared to the placebo group. Statistically significant virus reduction was observed in the high-risk group of patients with hypertension.

Prior to this, Levovir demonstrated efficacy against viruses isolated from Korean COVID-19 patient specimens in CALU-3 cells (human lung cells) and VERO cells (monkey kidney cells). Based on this, a use patent for COVID-19 was registered in August last year, and an international patent (PCT) was also filed.

A representative from Bukwang Pharmaceutical stated, "Through this clinical trial, we expect to prove the reduction of infectious virus with reliable data, demonstrating the competitiveness of Levovir as an antiviral drug."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.