Noxopharm plans to take Idronoxil (Veyonda ®) to the next stage of testing following promising results in its first round of safety trials.

In an announcement to the Australian Stock Exchange on Monday, 23 August, Noxopharm stated that its partnership with Hudson Institute of Medical Research has led to an important discovery about the anti-inflammatory mechanism of action of idronoxil, the active ingredient in Veyonda.

Clinical trials results

The company also released preliminary top line data of its NOXCOVID Phase I clinical trial.

Of 38 patients hospitalised with moderate respiratory disease 37 were able to complete their treatment course and recovered; only 1/38 required mechanical ventilation and this patient was the only death in the full analysis group.

Potential for Veyonda as a COVID-19 treatment

Veyonda is being positioned as an anti-inflammatory drug in COVID-19 patients with moderate disease, providing protection from a hyper-inflammatory response while still allowing a protective immune response to the SARS-CoV-2 virus

Noxopharm claims Veyonda has potential for use in both in-hospital and outpatient management.

Approaches are now being made to have this treatment included in funded platform clinical trials.

The key to the current studies is the identification of the enzyme, TANK-binding kinase 1 (TBK1), as the molecular target of idronoxil in terms of its anti-inflammatory properties.

Inflammatory pathways

Associate Professor Michael Gantier, Head of the Nucleic Acids and Innate Immunity Laboratory at Hudson Institute said: “TBK1 is a point of convergence of many inflammatory pathways, and a target under significant investigation by several big pharmaceutical companies.”

“Our latest findings suggest that idronoxil may not only be useful to prevent progression of COVID-19 patients from mild to severe disease, but also may decrease the risk of long-lasting post-infectious symptoms, seen in up to half of COVID-19 patients,” Dr Gantier said.

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