EFFECTOR Says First Patient Dosed In Second Cohort Of Phase 1b Trial Of Zotatifin For COVID-19

(RTTNews) - Biopharmaceutical company eFFECTOR Therapeutics, Inc. (EFTR) announced Wednesday it has dosed the first patient in the second cohort of its Phase 1b clinical trial of zotatifin in non-hospitalized adults with confirmed COVID-19 infection.

The study is a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial evaluating the safety and antiviral activity of a single dose of zotatifin.

The dose escalation to the second cohort comes after the positive recommendation of the independent data safety monitoring board upon review of safety data from the first dose cohort.

The completed cohort also included the first subjects dosed with a sub-cutaneous formulation of zotatifin and preliminary analysis demonstrated equivalent plasma drug levels compared to IV delivery.

Zotatifin is a potent and sequence-selective small molecule inhibitor of eIF4A, a host protein required to unwind the complex secondary structures within the 5' untranslated region of the genome of SARS-CoV-2 and other RNA viruses.

Zotatifin is a host-directed investigational therapeutic, meaning that it acts on a human protein that the SARS-CoV-2 virus hijacks to synthesize new viruses. As such, zotatifin may have a higher barrier to viral mutational escape than therapies that target components of the virus itself.

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