Thread by @polybioRF

We are excited to announce an $800,000 donation to Mount Sinai to support a clinical trial of the drug rapamycin in patients with long COVID. The trial will be conducted at CoRE: a clinic directed by Dr. David Putrino and PolyBio's Dr. Amy Proal:
polybio.org/polybio-suppor…

2/ "We extremely motivated to run a clinical trial for an affordable, generic drug with the potential to help long COVID patients" says Dr. Proal, who serves as PolyBio's President and Scientific Director of CoRE.

3/ Blood samples from trial participants will be sent to Dr. Akiko Iwasaki's laboratory at Yale University where analysis will determine how use of rapamycin impacts parts of the immune response.

4/ Rapamycin is an FDA approved, generic drug that regulates immune and growth- inhibitory signaling. Increasingly, it is being tested or prescribed in a low, once-weekly dose in an effort to improve immune function.

5/ For example, one clinical trial found that low-dose analogs of rapamycin increased interferon-induced antiviral gene expression in elderly adults:
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29997249/

6/ Long COVID is increasingly connected to persistence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in tissue, Epstein-Barr virus reactivation, and immune exhaustion. It follows that low-dose rapamycin may benefit patients with long COVID.

7/ With such effects in mind, one clinical trial found that continuous rapamycin use throughout the SARS-CoV-2 infection period was associated with a significant reduction in moderate or severe COVID-19 cases:
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10…

8/ Rapamycin users also did not report any cases of long COVID, despite being an average of 7.5 years older than non-users.

9/ In another study, once-weekly dosing of a rapamycin analog was found to improve signs of T cell exhaustion and to boost influenza vaccine immune response in otherwise healthy older adults without significant side effects:
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25540326/

10/ The dose of rapamycin used for immune modulation is much lower than that used for rapamycin’s conventional use as an organ transplant rejection or cancer therapy drug.

11/ "From the discoveries we have published regarding the biological features of people with long COVID with our collaborator Dr Akiko Iwasaki, low-dose rapamycin is an exciting drug target that has the potential to directly address some of the immune (cont. in next)

12/ “or infection-related dysfunction that many people are experiencing," says David Putrino, the Nash Family Director of CoRE. We are hopeful that this will be a first step in validating a cheap, safe and effective long COVID treatment."