The University of Nebraska has released the newest episode of its “Leading Nebraska” podcast series, featuring UNMC’s work in testing remdesivir, a drug treatment for COVID-19.
Although vaccines are making their way to frontline workers — and eventually, to all citizens — it’s still critical to manage the health of patients already ill with COVID-19 who are in our health care systems.
In December of 2020, the U.S. record for hospitalized COVID-19 patients soared past its record from April to an all-time high of more than 113,000. As more people are hospitalized, the pandemic’s health effects are increasingly felt across the nation.
Andre Kalil, MD, a UNMC internal medicine professor and an infectious diseases physician at Nebraska Medicine, led the first National Institutes of Health trial to evaluate experimental COVID-19 treatments, focusing on the anti-viral drug remdesivir.
In February 2020, UNMC saw COVID-19 moving quickly through European countries. They started making plans to prepare for a potential epidemic here-and when the virus began affecting patients in the U.S., they already had plans to start a clinical trial.
Dr. Kalil said, “We started the process of designing a study to find new therapies for a virus that, up to that time, we had never seen before.” At that time, there were no proven and effective treatments for COVID-19 — so the opportunity to test remdesivir was important.
UNMC is uniquely qualified to lead the remdesivir study. The medical center has one of only a few biocontainment units in the country, which housed Ebola patients in 2014 and is housing COVID-19 patients today. It also has globally recognized expertise in managing and treating infectious disease, from bench research to on-the-ground training. The newly-opened Global Center for Health Security houses their biopreparedness, infectious diseases and high-consequence infections research, education and clinical care — as well as the National Quarantine Unit, the nation’s only federal quarantine facility.
UNMC began with testing remdesivir in a randomized, controlled trial and is now in its third phase of the trial, this time testing remdesivir in combination with a medication used to treat multiple sclerosis. While studies are ongoing, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently approved remdesivir for treatment of COVID-19.
Dr. Kalil is motivated by the opportunity to make a difference. “The hope is that we’ll have multiple different treatments that we can use in different stages of the disease — alone or in combination,” he said. “That drives 100% of my professional motivation — making sure that I can make the lives of my patients better and that I can save them.”
The NU system’s “Leading Nebraska” podcast was launched last fall to share stories of researchers, students and educators across its four campuses who are growing the state’s workforce and quality of life. Podcast topics include nursing, agricultural education, workforce development, cybersecurity, teacher education, national defense and others, featuring experts from UNK, UNL, UNO and UNMC.
Listeners may follow the “Leading Nebraska” podcast here.