Davis Company Working On Breathable Medicine To Aid Covid-19 Recovery

Source: Sacramento Business Journal, Mark Anderson
Photo: Dr. Amir Zeki, co-founder of InVixa Inc. (KARIN HIGGINS | UC DAVIS)

A Davis biopharmaceutical startup has licensed a breathable statin technology from the University of California Davis that may help people suffer less and recover faster from Covid-19.

InVixa Inc. plans to be in preclinical trials starting this year for its breathable medicine, which gets into the nose and lungs more quickly than a pill and could treat the respiratory problems caused by viruses and specifically Covid-19. Human trials could begin this year.

“Our initial focus will be to treat hospitalized patients to prevent progression to respiratory failure using our novel inhaled statin formulation,” said Dr. Amir Zeki, co-founder of the company, an associate professor at UC Davis and a pulmonary doctor at the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, in a news release.

InVixa is a spinoff of InStatin Inc., another startup biopharma company co-founded by Zeki focused on inhaled statins as medicine to treat asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

InVixa is funded by unnamed Canadian investors to focus on using inhaled statins to treat viral illnesses.

Statins are widely prescribed drugs to treat cardiovascular diseases and stroke by lowering cholesterol levels in the blood. Those medications tend to be taken orally.

“While some people started to discount the potential and effectiveness of using statins to treat respiratory disease, I suspected it might have to do with the delivery method, and that with the oral route not enough of the drug was reaching the lung tissue,” Zeki told the UC Davis News Service.

Observational research appears to show patients taking oral statins regularly prior to and during their illness had faster recovery from the flu, along with lower mortality rates, said a news release from UC Davis.

InVixa got early support from the UC Davis Venture Catalyst program, which helps entrepreneurs take early-stage research to commercialization.

https://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2021/01/19/davis-startup-breathable-medicine-covid-19