CEL-SCI Corp. is developing an immunotherapy with the potential to treat coronavirus using its LEAPS peptide technology. The LEAPS peptides will utilize conserved regions of coronavirus proteins to stimulate protective cell mediated T cell responses and reduce viral load.  The LEAPS peptide technology can be used to construct immunotherapeutic peptides that exhibit both antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties. These products target the virus infection as well as elicit the appropriate protective response(s) against it.
 
Predictions of success using the LEAPS peptides against COVID-19 coronavirus are based on previous studies conducted in collaboration with the National Institutes for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) with another respiratory virus, pandemic influenza (H1N1).  In those studies, LEAPS peptides elicited protection of mice from morbidity and mortality after the introduction of infection by activating appropriate T cell responses rather than an inflammatory response.
 
Although individuals of all ages are susceptible to COVID-19 coronavirus infection, the elderly and individuals with compromised lung function or immunosuppression are at highest risk for severe morbidity and mortality.  It is believed that, in most cases, onset of symptoms takes between 2- and 14-days post infection, a period of time that may allow intervention for those at highest risk and with a known exposure.
 
COVID-19 is a member of the coronavirus family which “jumped” to humans from an animal reservoir.  Unlike human coronaviruses, which include the second most common cause of the common cold, COVID-19, like its cousins SARS and MERS coronaviruses, can replicate at the higher temperatures within the human lungs and, as a result, can cause highly morbid/mortal disease.  It is thought that the morbidity and mortality in the at-risk population is due to lung damage resulting from inflammatory immune responses to the virus.