Leede Jones Gable looking forward to final data from Revive Therapeutics Ltd's Phase 3 Bucillamine coronavirus trial

Leede Jones Gable, the investment firm, says that the scientific rationale behind Revive Therapeutics Ltd’s (CSE:RVV) (OTCMKTS:RVVTF) (FRA:31R) rheumatoid arthritis drug Bucillamine being a potential treatment for coronavirus (COVID-19) is based on “solid pharmacologic” data.

Ontario-headquartered biotech Revive is focused on commercializing therapeutics for infectious diseases and rare disorders and its US government-approved rheumatoid arthritis treatment Bucillamine is currently the subject of a 1,000-patient pivotal Phase III US-based COVID-19 trial.

READ: Revive Therapeutics collaborates with University of Health Sciences Antigua to pioneer clinical development of psychedelics

The study currently has 40 sites in 14 US states and is on track to meet its planned patient enrollment goal in the third quarter this year. Revive aims to file an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) with the regulator FDA and the company expects to generate 28-day efficacy data in the next quarter or two.

Leede Jones Gable said it was featuring the “small molecule drug developer” Revive as an ‘Idea of Interest’ within its broader healthcare coverage.

Its analysts drew particularly on published research from the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), specifically by lead researcher JH Fahy who has since joined Revive’s scientific/clinical advisory boards.

Notably, Bucillamine is a Thiol-based small-molecule drug, which have a long and positive clinical history, highlighted the analysts.

“Analogous thiol-containing drugs are approved for other indications, including another cysteine derivative called Nacetylcysteine (NAC) which itself has been suggested to have potential in mitigating COVID-19 symptoms…,” they added.

More recent studies in the 1990s from Japan also “nicely showed” that SA96/bucillamine (it was then code-named SA96) could in a dose-dependent manner “impede the activity of the immune cytokines interleukin1 (IL-1) and interleukin-2 (IL-2) on T-cell proliferation”, thereby providing one alternative plausible mechanism by which it could confer anti-inflammatory activity in rheumatoid arthritis, said the analysts.

Leede Jones Gable has no rating on the Revive stock or a target price.

“We would not conventionally ascribe material market value to preclinical data if such data were the sole foundation for our analysis, but for Bucillamine/COVID-19, we are of course rendering a view on a Phase III-stage and not a preclinical-stage asset, and the drug has a long-standing clinical history as a safe/effective therapy, if in a distinct inflammatory disease indication,” said the financial firm.

“Accordingly, though we are not yet ascribing a specific valuation or PT on RVV, we thought it timely to provide some scientific rationale for its Bucillamine Phase III COVID-19 program and our diligence on this theme reveals to us that available laboratory data is consistent with its prospects in targeting pathogenic viruses for which reactive surface thiols within virus surface proteins are relevant to pathogenicity.

“Specific biochemical data from the UCSF study certainly documents how bucillamine could work as a COVID-19 therapy and we therefore believe that investing in Phase III activities is medically justified and we look forward to final data in coming quarters,” it concluded.

Aside from Bucillamine, Revive has a psychedelics pharmaceutical program with the development of an oral thin film strip delivering psilocybin to treat mental health and substance abuse disorders. It is also advancing the novel use of psilocybin to treat traumatic brain injury and stroke.

The company’s cannabinoid pharmaceutical portfolio focuses on rare inflammatory diseases.

It was granted FDA orphan drug designation for the use of cannabidiol to treat autoimmune hepatitis and to treat ischemia and reperfusion injury from organ transplantation.

Contact the writer at [email protected]

Story by ProactiveInvestors