FLORHAM PARK, N.J., Aug. 5, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Celularity today announced that it has been awarded a $750,000 COVID-19 Project grant by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), one of the three clinical awards targeting the coronavirus. This grant will support California Institutions participating in the Phase I/II clinical trial of human placental hematopoietic stem cell derived natural killer (NK) cells (CYNK-001) for the treatment of adults with COVID-19. The University of California Irvine is the first CA site to open for patient enrollment.
CIRM’s COVID-19 Project supports promising discovery, preclinical and clinical trial stage projects that could quickly advance treatments or vaccines that utilize stem and/or progenitor cells. Celularity will use the CIRM grant to support the evaluation of the anti-viral activities of its cryopreserved investigational product, CYNK-001, in underserved and disproportionately affected populations with COVID-19, an infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Celularity received clearance from the United States Food and Drug Administration to proceed with a Phase I/II study to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and efficacy of CYNK-001 in patients with COVID-19.
Author: Canan Schuman, PharmD/PhD
Canan Schumann is Chief Editor for Axxiem and for Axxiem's blog "BiotechOntheWeb". When not writing for Axxiem, Canan works as a Clinical Research Scientist II at the Research and Development Department at Molecular Testing Labs, developing endpoint assays for the detection of infectious disease and cancer. Canan currently resides in Portland, Oregon, where he received his Honors Bachelor of Science (HBS), Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD.), and his Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Biopharmaceutics at Oregon State University.