Study to Evaluate the Safety and Efficacy of XAV-19 in Patients With COVID-19 Induced Moderate Pneumonia

Early inhibition of entry and replication of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a very promising therapeutic approach. Polyclonal neutralizing antibodies offers many advantages such as providing immediate immunity, consequently blunt an early pro-inflammatory pathogenic endogenous antibody response and lack of drug-drug interactions1-3. Because a suboptimal endogenous early antibody response with regard to SARS-CoV-2 replication in severe cases is observed, neutralising antibody treatment can be very interesting for patient with COVID-19 induced moderate pneumonia4,5. Convalescent plasma to treat infected patients is therefore an interesting therapeutic option currently under evaluation. However, the difficulties of collecting plasma and its safety aspects are not adapted to many patients. A new polyclonal humanized anti-SARS-CoV2 antibodies (XAV-19) is being developed by Xenothera, which can be administered as intravenous treatment. XAV-19 is a heterologous swine glyco-humanized polyclonal antibody (GH-pAb) raised against the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, inhibiting infection of ACE-2 positive human cells with SARS-CoV-2. Pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic studies have been performed in preclinical models including primates and a First In Human study with another fully representative GH-pAb from Xenothera is ongoing in volunteer patients recipients of a kidney graft. These studies indicated that 5 consecutive administrations of GH-pAbs can be safely performed in humans. The objective of this 2-steps phase 2 randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled study is 1) to define the optimal and safety XAV-19 dose to administrate in patients with COVID-19 induced moderate pneumonia ; 2) to show the clinical benefit of selected dose of XAV-19 when administered to patients with COVID-19 induced moderate pneumonia.