Drug firm Zydus Cadila on Friday said it has received approval from Mexico’s regulatory authority Cofepris to conduct clinical trials in the Latin American country with its biological therapy “Pegylated Interferon alpha-2b” for treatment of COVID-19.
Clinical and regulatory development of the therapy in COVID-19 is being executed in Mexico by Avant Santé Research Center S.A. de C.V., a contract research organisation (CRO) headquartered in Monterrey, Mexico.
In a regulatory filing, Zydus Cadila said it had received approval from the Mexican regulatory authority Cofepris to conduct clinical trials with its biological therapy, Pegylated Interferon alpha-2b, ‘PegiHepTM’.
It added that “this will be an open-label, randomised, comparator controlled study… to evaluate safety, efficacy and tolerability in patients with COVID-19”.
Zydus had earlier approached the Drug Controller General of India to investigate the role of Pegylated Interferon alpha-2b for COVID-19 and the clinical trials are now underway, the company said.
It is also working with the US Food and Drug Administration to open an investigational new drug application for Pegylated Interferon alpha-2b.
Earlier this month, Zydus Cadila had also received approval from Cofepris to test one of its lead research candidate Desidustat in the management of COVID-19.
Shares of Cadila Healthcare, the listed entity of the group, were trading 1.14 per cent higher at Rs 365.05 apiece on BSE.
The Covid-19 tally in India crossed the grim milestone of one million to stand at 1,003,832 on Friday, after nearly 35,000 cases were registered within a span of 24 hours.
As many as 25,602 deaths were recorded, according to data released by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
It took less than three weeks for the cases to go from half a million to one million. In contrast, it had taken nearly four months for India to reach the first half a million cases.
Globally, over 13 million people have been infected with the virus and 5,86,174 have died, with the most number of cases (3,536,658) and deaths (137,897) reported from the United States.
Britain, the United States and Canada have accused Russia of trying to steal information from researchers seeking a COVID-19 vaccine.