TY-027

The emergence & rapid spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) since December 2019 across 188 countries globally has become a major public health crisis. COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation on 11 March 2020. To date, tens of millions of cases have been reported and over 3% of these cases have died. COVID-19 is an acute respiratory disease caused by the novel SARS-CoV-2 virus from the Betacoronavirus genus, just like SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV. SARS-CoV-2 is primarily transmitted person-to-person through respiratory droplets/close contact. Fomite transmission has also been shown as a transmission route. Common respiratory symptoms such as fever, sore throat, cough & shortness of breath, may appear 2 - 14 days after exposure. About 20% of infected cases progress to severe disease resulting in an estimated 2 - 5% mortality rate. With the unrelenting increase in cases being reported worldwide, there is thus an urgent need for therapeutics to be developed to treat disease & reduce further transmission in order to disrupt the ongoing pandemic.
To date, there are no specific proven antiviral treatment to prevent disease progression from mild to severe respiratory dysfunction among COVID-19 patients. Supportive care is recommended for symptom relief & for severe cases. Numerous vaccine candidates against SARS-CoV-2 are under development. Tychan's TY027, a fully engineered human IgG, is one of the first few biologics in the world, specifically targeting SARS-CoV-2, to enter human clinical trials. Preliminary data from our phase 1 healthy volunteer trial (SCT-001; ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier NCT04429529) reveals that TY027 is safe & well-tolerated up to 20 mg/kg tested. A total of 10 adverse events (AEs) were observed, all were of mild in intensity with none resulting in subject withdrawal from the study. There were no serious adverse events & no clinically relevant trends in mean clinical laboratory, physical examinations, vital signs or ECG results were observed. Pharmacokinetic profile of subjects across dose cohorts 1 - 4, up to Day 14, were comparable to those typical of human IgG1 antibody with serum concentrations declining in a biphasic manner. Exposure of TY027, based on Cmax, increased in a linear & generally dose proportional manner. It is anticipated that TY027, when administered to acutely infected COVID-19 patients, could reduce disease severity. It may potentially also be used as a prophylaxis against COVID-19 amongst high risk contacts.