Critical Covid patient recovers after taking GC Pharma treatment

[GC PHARMA]

A man in his late 70s fully recovered from the coronavirus after taking GC Pharma’s plasma treatment GC5131A, the pharmaceutical company said Monday.

This is the first confirmed report of GC Pharma’s GC5131A curing a patient, but the successful result is not considered part of the ongoing clinical trials for the drug candidate’s authorization for market release.

The plasma treatment is a drug made from blood plasma donated by recovered Covid-19 patients and is currently undergoing Phase 2 clinical trials on severe-symptom patients.

The 78-year-old patient was not a participant in the clinical trials, but was one of 13 patients outside the study permitted to receive the drug by the government.

Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety permits emergency use of unlicensed treatments for individual clinical cases. The request has to be made by the patient’s doctor upon judgement that the unauthorized drug is the only option. GC Pharma’s only role in this process is supplying the treatment upon the government’s approval.

First confirmed positive in September, the recovered patient in his 70s was allowed to be treated with GC Pharma’s GC5131A after the coronavirus treatments currently in use at hospitals, including Gilead Sciences’ remdesivir, didn’t improve his condition. According to local reports, his condition was so bad that he had to rely on ventilators before the government approval came.

Roughly 20 days after treatment started with GC5131A, the man tested negative for Covid-19 on Nov. 18.

GC5131A was first prescribed for individual emergency use in mid-October. That month, the company produced the second batch of plasma treatments which it said could be used on actual patients, unlike the first batch which was purely used for clinical trial purposes.

BY SONG KYOUNG-SON [song.kyoungson@joongang.co.kr]