A Look at the Coronavirus Treatment Acceleration Program

With the coronavirus pandemic continuing to spread, exacting a death toll beyond anything seen in modern times, the race to make an effective vaccine and find new treatments has been extraordinary. To facilitate the search for treatments that can help affected patients recover, the United States’ Food and Drug Administration (FDA) instituted the Coronavirus Treatment Acceleration Program (CTAP) in August 2020. This special emergency program is designed to use all available resources to move new treatment options out of trials and onto the market as soon as is safely possible.

What Types of Treatments Are Being Studied?

In its search for a potential treatment for COVID-19, the FDA is exploring several different options. Antivirals, cell and gene therapies, neutralizing antibodies, immunomodulators, and other combinations of these therapies are just some of the types of treatments being studied. Some of these treatments are already in use for other types of illnesses, so researchers need to study the effectiveness of these treatments on COVID-19. More treatment options mean hopefully increased rates of survival for severely ill patients.

Antivirals work by stopping viruses from multiplying, and they have been in use for many years for diseases as devastating as HIV and as common as influenza. Cell and gene therapies are more complicated treatment options, and these treatments include several different, though similar, solutions. For cell therapy, treatments use cellular immunotherapies, other cells such as stem cells, and various related products. Gene therapy works by attempting to modify or manipulate how certain genes are expressed, thereby altering the properties of different cells for use in therapeutic applications.

Neutralizing antibody therapies involve the use of certain blood products (like convalescent plasma or hyperimmune globulin) to help individuals fight off the virus. These products are typically derived from patients who have recovered from COVID-19. Meanwhile, immunomodulators aim to slow the body’s immune system response to the virus. A common issue with COVID-19 infections is that the body’s immune system begins to attack the large organ systems, leading to organ failure.

Speeding Up the Review Process

The main goal of the Coronavirus Treatment Acceleration Program is to speed up the review and approval process to get as many different types of treatments to the public as possible in the fastest amount of time. Among the actions taken by the FDA through this program was a move to accelerate and streamline the process of submitting applications for the launch of new studies and clinical trials. This allows more researchers and innovators the ability to get new treatment options to the public in a fraction of the time.