May 26, 2021 06:00:00

New Corona clinical trial project 'RECOVERY' with more than 40,000 participants announces one-year results

A large randomized controlled trial project with a track record of investigating more than 40,000 COVID-19 patients in the United Kingdom, created to study effective treatments for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) The ' RECOVERY (Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy) study ' celebrated its 1st anniversary on March 23, 2021. Peter Hobby, co-leader of the RECOVERY trial and professor of emerging infectious diseases at Oxford University , who led the project, talks about the results of the year.

RECOVERY 1 year on: a rare success in the COVID-19 clinical trial landscape
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-021-00068-w

Hobby has been studying infectious diseases before the COVID-19 epidemic and has sought to improve the rate at which clinical trials begin in the event of an infectious disease. Although the test failed in the 2009 swine flu pandemic , the test could be started within a few months of the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa. However, the test was also started near the end of the epidemic, so he said he did not get satisfactory results.

When the outbreak of COVID-19 was reported, Mr. Hobby was working with a Chinese colleague and his team to set up a trial in Wuhan. We ran the protocol we had prepared for the MERS coronavirus and enrolled in clinical trials with the HIV treatments lopinavir and ritonavir within 20 days of the first case of infection being announced. Shortly thereafter, a second clinical trial using remdesivir was being conducted in Wuhan.

However, the number of cases in Wuhan plummeted due to active public health control measures in China, and the target sample size for research was not reached. By that time, cases began to be reported in Europe, and further research was carried out in the United Kingdom due to additional support from funders and the encounter with Martin Landray, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at Oxford University. became.

Mr. Hobby and Mr. Landley were in talks with WHO to cooperate with the solidarity trial conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO), but Mr. Hobby and others decided that the framework was too complicated. This is because the United Kingdom National Health Service (NHS) was so busy dealing with patients that it was urgent to simplify the procedure for enrolling patients in clinical trials.

After that, clinical trials were conducted with four drugs including lopinavir and ritonavir. The influx of clinical trial registration applications was decided through the COVID-19 Treatment Advisory Committee established by the British government. The RECOVERY trial has been conducted in more than 175 hospitals in the United Kingdom and has received sufficient feedback, resulting in a huge amount of resources wasted and reliability in previously poorly designed trials. Hobby says the situation where low data was occurring has improved.

'Whether pharmaceutical companies spend tens of millions of dollars to conduct trials in 1,000 patients, or a large scale that gives clear answers at a much lower cost. You will be thinking about adopting the exam. '