ACCORD
(Accelerating COVID-19 Research & Development)
The ACCORD platform will fast-track research into potential COVID-19 treatments and is reducing the time taken to set up clinical trials for new therapies.
This UK wide clinical trial platform aims to accelerate the development of new drugs for patients hospitalised with COVID-19.
Current treatments
Clinical trials run as part of the ACCORD platform will test several different drugs to understand how they improve clinical outcomes in COVID-19 hospitalised patients.
Drugs currently in progress are:
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Bemcentinib – AXL inhibitor with early data showing it can reduce viral infection and lung inflammation and blocks the SARS-CoV-2 coating from interacting and gaining entry into cells
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MEDI3506 – an anti-IL-33 monoclonal antibody
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Zilucoplan – a complement C5 inhibitor that could block severe inflammatory responses, such as a ‘cytokine storm’, in COVID-19 patients
Those drugs showing promise in ACCORD will be fed into large-scale UK COVID-19 studies such as the RECOVERY trial.
Acalabrutinib, a Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitor, is no longer in the programme as sufficient accrual of data has been obtained across a number of studies.
Funders and partners
ACCORD has been made possible by partnership working between the UKRI, the NIHR’s Biomedical Research Centres and Clinical Research Facilities, and expert centres in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, clinical research company IQVIA and biopharmaceutical companies. In October 2020 we welcomed the Medical Evaluation Unit in Manchester to this partnership.
ACCORD is sponsored by University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust and supported by the NIHR Respiratory Translational Research Collaboration (R-TRC) and the pharmaceutical companies Astra Zeneca, BergenBio and UCB.
The ACCORD trials platform runs in close alliance with a national collaboration of Phase 2 drug development platforms: CATALYST, DEFINE, and TACTIC.