Eli Lil­ly launch­es PhI­II JAK study, aim­ing for the first drug to low­er mor­tal­i­ty in Covid-19

Soon af­ter the NIH an­nounced in late April that Eli Lil­ly’s JAK in­hibitor baric­i­tinib would be the sec­ond drug test­ed in the tri­al that had proven remde­sivir ef­fec­tive, doc­tors around the world be­gan telling Lil­ly that that wouldn’t be enough.

Since the ear­ly days of the pan­dem­ic, the In­di­anapo­lis phar­ma had heard from doc­tors in Italy, Spain and else­where who, fac­ing hos­pi­tals full of pa­tients with a dis­ease with no known treat­ment, used the JAK in­hibitor — known com­mer­cial­ly as the rheuma­toid arthri­tis drug  Olu­mi­ant — off-la­bel. The doc­tors want­ed to know con­clu­sive­ly if it worked. But the NIH tri­al could on­ly tell them if, when com­bined with remde­sivir, it worked bet­ter than remde­sivir alone. And then on­ly in the more se­vere pa­tients.

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