Revive Therapeutics (RVV.C), a company that specializes in creating treatments and tests for diseases that don’t have many existing options available, has made a deal with a health research group called Lawson Health Research Institute to license the rights to use special signals in the blood—called biomarkers—that can show if someone has ‘long COVID.’
“We are very excited to commercialize a potential world-first patented diagnostic solution for long COVID, which may have the ability to help millions of people globally in being correctly diagnosed so that appropriate medical interventions and treatments can be offered to improve quality of life and reduce the economic burden experienced by countries,” said Michael Frank, chief executive officer of Revive.
Long COVID can be tricky because it has lots of different effects and symptoms – more than 200 in fact – such as tiredness, brain fog, and heart issues, and right now, doctors figure out if someone has it by basically testing for and ruling out other diseases. Because there isn’t a straightforward test for it yet, diagnosis can be somewhat hit and miss.
Personally, I experienced it for well over a year, making it nearly impossible for me to work in the way I was used to, but getting a diagnosis for it, let alone treatment, was nearly impossible. medical professionals told me, “It’s probably long COVID but if you really want to know, it’s going to take some work.”
Since there was no effective treatment anyway, I didn’t bother, but if biomarkers exist that can make the diagnosis possible, I’ll be first in line.
Revive wants to create a test that can quickly tell if someone has long COVID, which would make it easier to treat and might also save time and money on otherwise unnecessary tests. While earlier trials saw Revive looking to use their drug Bucillamine to treat COVID, the rapidly evolving disease and the global effort to find vaccines saw the Bucillamine trials basically run out of time, but long COVID remains a massive problem that is unlikely to recede, as some 7.5% of all US adults are said to experience it currently.
The discovery of the biomarkers identified by a research team at Lawson, led by Dr. Douglas Fraser, was recently published in the journal, Molecular Medicine.
Revive Therapeutics and Lawson will work together in completing the development of a qELISA laboratory test kit and a lateral flow assay point-of-care device for rapid testing of long COVID. In addition, Revive Therapeutics will evaluate the potential of the long COVID test as a companion to bucillamine — a potential treatment for long COVID disease.
If they’re successful, it could be good news for the millions of people suffering from the condition and also help reduce the huge costs long COVID adds to economies, not to mention a good earner for the company.
Revive has the rights to use these blood markers all over the world, and they have patents in hand to keep this technology just for their use. They’re hoping to produce two kinds of tests: one that would be used in labs, and another, more simple version, that could be used anywhere, like at a doctor’s office or potentially at home.
Some have cast scorn at Revive for failing to get their clinical trials on Bucillamine completed with a positive US FDA result before other vaccines were released, but this effort, and news last week that the company is working with the Canadian Department of Defense to research if Bucillamine can be used to treat nerve agent attacks – is part of what Revive does and continues to do.
— Chris Parry
FULL DISCLOSURE: Revive is an Equity.Guru marketing client and we own stock in the company