Viral Phase: While vaccines and antivirals are important treatment strategy components, they are rarely 100% effective, can have undesirable side effects and may have limited durability due to viral mutation. Development timelines for vaccines and antivirals tend to be prolonged and unpredictable because these are virus-specific and generally cannot be repurposed easily (“one bug one drug”). To be confer protection vaccine treatment must commence prior to infection, and antiviral therapies are typically ineffective if not begun soon after infection. Even when properly administered antivirals usually provide only limited therapeutic benefit as is the case for remdesivir, the only currently approved COVID-19 treatment.
Host Inflammatory Phase: Direct inhibitors of inflammatory mediators (e.g. JAK inhibitors and anti-cytokine antibodies) are powerful medicines that can have serious systemic side effects and often require hospital administration and close medical monitoring.
Pulmonary Phase: A key treatment gap in COVID is the development of treatments to address poor fluid clearance associated with pneumonia and inflammation and pro-inflammatory cytokine release in the airway, prior to the systemic cytokine effects and impaired lung function associated with severe disease and hospitalization. This is the target of ORP100S.
