The LUMC, in collaboration with pharmaceutical company Aurinia, is starting a study into the protective effects of the new drug voclosporin in kidney transplant patients with COVID-19. Voclosporin inhibits the immune system and is used by organ recipients. The study is looking at whether this drug offers more protection against COVID-19 in transplant patients than the most commonly used rejection drug tacrolimus.
“The COVID-19 pandemic poses new complications for patients who need immune system inhibition to maintain their transplanted organ. This puts them at greater risk of developing severe symptoms after infection,” said Onno Teng, nephrologist and initiator of this study at the LUMC.
Virus inhibiting
Calcineurin inhibitors (CNIs), such as voclosporin, have been shown in previous studies to inhibit the replication of various viruses in cells. LUMC researchers showed a similar virus-inhibiting effect of CNIs on cells infected with the current coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. Voclosporin in particular effectively inhibits the replication of the coronavirus.
Unlike voclosporin, tacrolimus, a commonly used immune system inhibiting drug, showed no antiviral activity against the coronavirus. “Therefore, voclosporin is a potentially attractive CNI for COVID-19 infected transplant patients who are already using CNIs as part of their chronic immunosuppressive therapy,” said Aiko de Vries, nephrologist and co-initiator of the study.
Study in patients
The LUMC is therefore starting a 56-day study in which the antiviral effects of voclosporin are compared with tacrolimus in twenty COVID-19 positive patients with a kidney transplant. Half of this group continues to use tacrolimus while the other ten switch to voclosporin. After 56 days, the researchers check how many virus particles the patients still contain and whether this differs between the two groups. In addition, the researchers are looking at the time until patients no longer have symptoms, the safety and tolerability of the drugs. After these 56 days, patients are followed for up to one year to determine the long-term safety of voclosporin.
The pharmaceutical company Aurinia is the producer of voclosporin. “We are pleased to test the potential of voclosporin to meet the urgent needs of this particular patient population, driven by the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Robert Huizinga, Executive Vice President Research at Aurinia. The new drug is not yet commercially available in the Netherlands and is therefore only used in research.
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