Helixmith said it has made 50-percent progress in recruiting patients for its clinical trial of TADIOS, a Covid-19 treatment, in India.

The company plans to conduct a double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter clinical trial on 100 people at four medical institutions in India and has enrolled 50 patients last Friday. Its purpose is to investigate the safety and tolerability of TADIOS, and whether the treatment can inhibit the disease progression after Covid-19 infection.

According to Helixmith, the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in India has reached 35 million, ranking second globally. As the South Asian country has many exchanges with South Africa, the country has entered an emergency with the appearance of the Omicron variant.

TADIOS has shown excellent therapeutic effects in animal models similar to acute lung injury caused by Covid-19 infection. When foreign substances enter the lungs and cause oxidative stress and cause an inflammatory reaction, it causes significant damage to the lungs. The company has revealed through research that TADIOS has a therapeutic effect by inhibiting these reactions.

The company expects that TADIOS will have unique and differentiated competitiveness as it regulates various immune factors involved in oxidative stress and inflammation, which is very different from most therapeutics, developed targeting one biomaterial.

“The world is in a state of emergency because of breakthrough infections and the emergence of the Omicron variant virus,” Helixmith CEO Kim Sun-young said. “Although the vaccination rate in Korea has reached 80 percent, the number of confirmed cases is hovering around 3,000 every day.”

Just as flu requires treatment, such as Tamiflu, Kim added an urgent need to develop a treatment for Covid-19.