BioLeaders said its Covid-19 treatment candidate under joint development with the Korea Mouse Phenotyping Center has shown effective results against the Delta variant in a recent study.

The company also conducted a secondary evaluation of the candidate drug’s efficacy at Seoul National University Bundang Hospital to check whether it shows the same effectiveness in the original Covid-19 strain and the Delta variant models.

The primary endpoint was to assess whether the drug could alleviate or treat pneumonia caused by the delta variant.

BioLeaders mimicked Covid-19 infections in humans by applying respiratory infections in animal models and evaluated the efficacy of BioLeaders’ gamma polyglutamic acid. The study showed a significantly improved degree of pneumonia lesions in the group that took gamma polyglutamic acid in the lung tissue analysis.

According to the company, the control group infected with the Delta variant had typical symptoms of pneumonia, such as increased inflammation and bleeding.

However, the group administered with gamma polyglutamic acid showed improved symptoms, displaying conditions similar to the uninfected control group.

BioLeaders’ gamma polyglutamic acid is an immunomodulating agent that activates natural killer (NK) cells and removes pneumonia caused by viruses and related inflammatory cytokines to inhibit progressing to severe pneumonia.

As the drug candidate works regardless of the variants, the company expects it will be effective on newly emerging Covid-19 mutations in the future.

The drug candidate showed no severe side effects in the previous phase 2 clinical trial in treating cervical epithelial dysplasia.

BioLeaders plans to submit its clinical plans for the Covid-19 drug candidate to regulators to begin phase 2 studies before the year ends.