The clinical study, dubbed COLCORONA, will assess whether colchicine will serve as an effective treatment to prevent the phenomenon of major inflammatory storm present in adults suffering from severe complications related to COVID-19.
Colchicine, a generic and orally administered anti-inflammatory medication, is currently used to manage pericarditis, gout, and familial Mediterranean fever.
COLCORONA trial will enrol around 6,000 participants who will be followed for 30 days and initial results will be revealed a few days upon the completion of a study.
MHI research centre director Dr Jean-Claude Tardif already commenced the study at the MHI in Canada.
Dr Tardif is now working with NYU Langone Cardiac Cath Lab associate director Dr Binita Shah and NYU Langone medicine and biochemistry and molecular pharmacology professor Dr Michael Pillinger to extend the study to patients in New York City.
The New York state is said to have more than 130,000 COVID-19 positive people.
The study patients must be 40 years and over, as well as have at least one high-risk criteria. They have to take the drug or placebo daily for 30 days and participate in two follow-up calls by phone or videoconference.
COLCORONA trial is organised by the Montreal Health Innovations Coordinating Center (MHICC), which is funded by the Government of Quebec and supported by Pharmascience and CGI.
Recently, Colchicin assessed in the COLCOT study that compared colchicine 0.5mg daily to placebo on top of standard of care in preventing ischemic cardiovascular events in patients with a recent myocardial infarction (MI).
In March, Noveome Biotherapeutics launched a new programme to assess its ST26 product candidate for the treatment of the severe inflammatory cytokine storm response associated with COVID-19, the disease resulted due to the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.