Southampton to play leading role in fast-tracked COVID-19 treatment trial

Without such treatments, the disease can lead to Acute Respiratory Syndrome — or complete lung failure — in severely affected patients leaving them on respirators and at high risk of death.

Now the ACCORD (ACcelerating COVID-19 dRug Development) collaborative of leading UK doctors and scientists, industry and government partners is accelerating the country’s drug development processes from years to months to get new COVID-19 treatments into national trials.

“There has been a tremendous effort to pull this together so rapidly. ACCORD is a national effort and will be key to developing effective new treatments which are needed so desperately,” Comments ACCORD clinical academic lead Professor Tom Wilkinson of the NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) and the University of Southampton.

Six potential drugs will initially enter the programme, with the first three of these beginning Phase 2 studies, which assess how well it works and its safety. Those showing promise will be fed into UK’s large-scale COVID-19 studies such as the RECOVERY trial, currently the world’s largest randomised controlled clinical trial for COVID-19 treatment. View more