30 October 2020 - - MedStar Washington Hospital Center in Washington, DC has treated its first COVID-19 patient with lenzilumab, US-based biopharmaceutical company Humanigen, Inc. (HGEN) said.

The primary goal of this Phase 3 randomized, double-blind, multicenter, placebo-controlled clinical trial is to determine if lenzilumab can help hospitalized patients with COVID-19 recover faster.

As many as 89% of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 are at risk of a complication called cytokine storm, a harmful inflammation that has been the leading cause of COVID-19 death.

MedStar Washington Hospital Center is one of 18 sites in the US approved to enroll eligible patients to study lenzilumab, designed specifically to stop this storm.

Eligible patients can participate in this trial while also receiving other standard-of-care therapies as recommended by their treating physician.

For more information on participating in the Phase 3 COVID-19 trial of lenzilumab, visit StopStorm.com, and talk to your doctor to see if you may be eligible to participate.

Humanigen is developing its portfolio of clinical and pre-clinical therapies for the treatment of cancers and infectious diseases via its novel, cutting-edge GM-CSF neutralization and gene-knockout platforms.

The company's immediate focus is to prevent or minimize the cytokine release syndrome that precedes severe lung dysfunction and ARDS in serious cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

The company is also focused on creating next-generation combinatory gene-edited CAR-T therapies using strategies to improve efficacy while employing GM-CSF gene knockout technologies to control toxicity.

In addition, the company is developing its own portfolio of proprietary first-in-class EphA3-CAR-T for various solid cancers and EMR1-CAR-T for various eosinophilic disorders.

The company is also exploring the effectiveness of its GM-CSF neutralization technologies (either through the use of lenzilumab as a neutralizing antibody or through GM-CSF gene knockout) in combination with other CAR-T, bispecific or natural killer T cell engaging immunotherapy treatments to break the efficacy/toxicity linkage, including to prevent and/or treat graft-versus-host disease in patients undergoing allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.

Additionally, Humanigen and Kite, a Gilead company, are evaluating lenzilumab in combination with Yescarta (axicabtagene ciloleucel) in patients with relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma in a clinical collaboration.