Eli Lilly (LLY +0.80%) made some important disclosures on Wednesday morning regarding a pair of coronavirus treatment candidates and their potential path to accessibility in a hospital near you. In a nutshell, new clinical trial data for LY-CoV555 and LY-CoV016 suggest the pair of antibodies go a long way toward improving outcomes for COVID-19 patients.
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More from LY-CoV555 and LY-CoV016 to come
Based on a recent interim analysis, the company has submitted an initial request to the FDA for an emergency use authorization (EUA) that would allow physicians to administer LY-CoV555 to higher-risk patients diagnosed with mild-to-moderate COVID-19. The amount of SARS-CoV-2 circulating in the bloodstreams of patients treated with LY-CoV555 as a monotherapy fell significantly compared to those given a placebo, and it looks like combining LY-CoV555 with LY-CoV016 is even more effective.
Since the initiation of the study, we've learned that by day 11, most patients have already cleared the virus completely from their systems with standard care. This extra challenge didn't prevent the combination of LY-CoV555 and LY-CoV016 from meeting the trial's primary endpoint, which was viral load reduction 11 days after beginning treatment.
Measured by actual outcomes, it's clear that Lilly's antibody combination provides a meaningful benefit. Patients given the combo-treatment were 84.5% less likely to go to the hospital for COVID-19-related reasons than those randomized to receive a placebo.
Eli Lilly thinks it can supply 100,000 doses of LY-CoV555 monotherapy by the end of the month and have up to 1 million doses ready by the end of the year. Manufacturing of the combination treatment is much further behind, with 50,000 doses expected by the end of 2020.
