27. August 2020

Jens Lundgren at the forefront of new global efforts against COVID-19

Forty-five different types of medication developed especially for the fight against COVID-19 will be tested in a new global effort led by Professor Jens Lundgren, head of the DNRF Center of Excellence PERSIMUNE at Rigshospitalet. This major effort has been launched by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

Professor Jens Lundgren.
Professor Jens Lundgren. Photo: Rigshospitalet.

Professor Jens Lundgren, head of center at the DNRF Center of Excellence for Personalized Medicine of Infectious Complications in Immune Deficiency (PERSIMUNE) at Rigshospitalet, will lead a new and extensive effort against COVID-19. The new effort, called ACTIV-3, is specifically aimed at coronavirus. The initiative will test 45 types of medication in clinical experiments to develop new and better treatments for people who become infected.

“In the past, we have tested drugs that had already been developed for other diseases. That way, you could say we took them off the shelf to see if they could work. But in this initiative, we must test a lot of different preparations that are specifically developed against coronavirus. Therefore, our hopes are greater this time,” said Professor Lundgren.

The major effort has been initiated by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and is part of the U.S. government’s wide-ranging research effort to combat COVID-19 called “Operation Warp Speed.”

“I have become the main person responsible for the development of the experimental protocol, for the experiment itself being carried out properly and responsibly, and for documenting and reporting what we find. We collaborate with 450 hospitals on all continents and expect to involve more than 10,000 patients, so it is somewhat of an effort we have embarked on,” said Lundgren.

Professor Lundgren and the rest of the researchers from ACTIV-3 have already begun experiments for the first drug and expect to have preliminary results within the next month, when they will also start exploring at least three other drugs.

Read more about ACTIV-3 in a press release from the NIH

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