Exciting news on Texas A&M System’s battle against the coronavirus. Dr. Jeffrey Cirillo at the Texas A&M Health Science Center is leading a group of world-renown institutions in a clinical trial that could deliver a COVID-19 treatment in six months.
He can do this because he is using an existing vaccine, BCG, which has been used for decades. Texas A&M is the first U.S. institution in the clinical trial that has federal approval to test humans, and Dr. Cirillo’s team is recruiting and vaccinating health care workers in College Station and Houston this week.
I appropriated $2.5 million from the Chancellor Research Initiative to get the clinical trial going right away. If it works as Cirillo believes, the BCG vaccine, which boosts your immune system, could help re-open the economy more safely and buy us time while other researchers pursue a vaccine specific for COVID-19.
His partners in the trail include Harvard’s School of Public Health, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, and the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
