A new drug for lung fibrosis that Yale pulmonologist Dr. Naftali Kaminski began developing a few years ago shows promise for treating certain life-threatening effects of COVID-19, and his research team is rapidly laying the groundwork for clinical trials.
A new drug for lung fibrosis that Yale pulmonologist Dr. Naftali Kaminski began developing a few years ago shows promise for treating certain life-threatening effects of COVID-19, and his research team is rapidly laying the groundwork for clinical trials.
In lung fibrosis, the drug, called sobetirome, mimics the effects of thyroid hormone therapy, which heals scarring and improves cell function in lungs — but sobetirome lacks the toxic effects of thyroid hormone on heart and skeletal muscle.
Kaminski’s team — along with those of Dr. Charles Dela Cruz, director of Yale’s Center for Pulmonary Infection Research and Treatment, and Dr. Patty J. Lee, a former Yale faculty member now at Duke University — recently discovered that sobetirome also showed promise in preventing and treating Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS), a life-threatening condition that allows fluid to leak into the lungs. ARDS is common in COVID-19 patients, particularly among older patients, and the condition can lead to respiratory failure and death.
Read more at Yale University
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
