Research report: Cancer Drug Greatly Reduces Deaths in Hospitalized Covid Patients

An experimental drug initially developed to fight cancer cut the risk of death for people hospitalized with Covid by half, according to a study published on Wednesday.

The drug, sabizabulin, seemed to be more effective than others that have been authorized for severely ill Covid patients. Veru, the company in Miami that developed the drug, has applied to the Food and Drug Administration for an emergency authorization of its use. That would potentially add a new weapon to the modest arsenal available to hospitalized patients, experts said.

“This looks super impressive,” said Dr. Ilan Schwartz, an infectious disease expert at the University of Alberta who was not involved in the study. “We have a small number of treatments for patients with severe disease that improve mortality, but another treatment that can further reduce deaths would be very welcome.”

Dr. Schwartz cautioned, however, that the trial was relatively small, with just 134 patients receiving the drug. “Overall, I think this is very exciting, although I would welcome larger and independent confirmatory studies,” he said.

Sabizabulin blocks cells from building microtubules, critical molecular cables that shuttle material from one part of the cell’s interior to another.

The drug was originally developed by researchers at the University of Tennessee to fight cancer because fast-growing tumor cells depend on the microtubules for their rapid growth.

Two years ago, researchers at Veru tried sabizabulin on Covid. They suspected the drug might prevent viral replication, which depends on the microtubule network to bring together the pieces of new viruses.

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