A primer on Long COVID Labs, one of the latest additions into the BIO Incubator. Long COVID Labs (LCL) aims to accelerate breakthrough treatments to cure the 100M+ Long COVID patients still struggling to find solutions from Big Pharma.
Long COVID is a condition that didn't even receive formal recognition in the medical industry until it went viral on social media.
Now, according to the CDC, 7% of all US adults — around 17 million people — still suffer from Long COVID (as of March 2024), with 14% of COVID infections resulting in Long COVID. The global estimate is over 100M, with over $1 trillion in yearly costs to the global economy.
Yet, even as the federal government has reportedly spent over $1 billion on an initiative to help combat the disease, there's little to show as far as medical progress.
Case in point: not a single drug has been approved by the FDA for treating Long COVID.
The government has abandoned mitigation efforts and slow-walked more funding for Long COVID treatments. Big Pharma is ignoring this area, and people are losing hope.
How do we accelerate change?
Introducing Long Covid Labs (LCL), one of the standout applicants of Cohort 2 of the BIO Incubator.
LCL was founded by Rohan Dixit, a serial healthcare entrepreneur and former neuroscientist at Stanford and the Harvard-MIT-MGH Martinos Center. Dixit suffered from Long COVID after an initially mild COVID infection in 2020. His symptoms worsened over 2.5 years, leading him to self-experiment and seemingly cure himself.
Now, Dixit and LCL are working to rapidly identify, fund, and bring similar therapeutics to market not in five or ten painstakingly slow years—but now. He is supported by an experienced team of scientists, biotech builders and clinicians:
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After discovering a research paper showing persistent virus long after a COVID-19 infection, Dixit underwent a series of experimental therapies — a combination treatment, inspired by the clinical protocols for other chronic infections like HIV.
Within six hours, the treatment reduced his symptoms. A second treatment stopped them entirely. The experience inspired him to connect with a team of entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists, and patients dedicated to discovering a cure for Long COVID, leading to the formation of the LCL.
LCL’s mission could not be more timely. According to Dixit, Long COVID is the fastest-growing chronic health condition in human history. Unfortunately, the R&D of treatments has been caught in a bureaucratic, iterative, and siloed loop that is merely replicating research instead of prioritizing valuable clinical trial recruitment and staff.
During a talk at the DeSci Summit in Singapore, Dixit stressed the need to develop new antivirals that can clear the lingering infection responsible for Long COVID—what he called a "public health tsunami."
According to current research, the incidence of patients showing symptoms of long COVID is potentially the tip of the iceberg for those with progressive health degradation, including potential cognitive damage in healthy young people.
Clinical Trials on the Horizon
LCL is starting enrollment for our first clinical study on patients suffering from Long COVID later this year. The team is repurposing Broadly Neutralizing Antibodies (bNAbs) and has already begun recruiting patients for its upcoming trial. As the trials plan to leverage a novel repurposing of existing antiviral medication (bNAbs), LCL can immediately start to treat patients and book revenue if this trial is proven effective to the FDA.
One drug LCL has on their radar is Pemgarda, an FDA/EUA-approved treatment similar to Evusheld, which was formerly used for COVID-19 pre-exposure prophylaxis but is no longer approved for use. Long COVID Labs plans to use Paxlovid, another popular approved COVID treatment, as its first replication inhibitor. It is exploring potential options to experiment with other non-FDA-approved drugs.
Simultaneously, LCL is researching Long Acting Antibody (LAAb) treatments to prevent future infections. If these LAAbs are proven effective, they could be administered alongside COVID vaccines for dual protection (infection & persistence). This would include LCD as a part of the default standard of care for COVID-19, a commercial market where vaccines make $25B in annual revenue.
LCL’s first treatment candidate combines a long-acting monoclonal antibody and viral replication inhibitor. LCL scientists who will contribute to the DAO’s R&D will come from labs at Stanford, Mt. Sinai, UCSF, and throughout traditional biotech.
Currently, the team is also wrapping up its first study design while deciding on a location for clinical trials, aiming to accelerate the publication of its first collection of data.
A Y-Combinator Approach to Biotech
Long COVID Labs is another exciting example of the kinda of BioDAOs that can benefit from applying to join BIO and a Y-Combinator approach to incubation and equipping scientists, patients, and biotech builders with essential resources.
Dixit and Long Covid Labs's multi-phased strategy starts with leveraging existing treatments while simultaneously developing potentially breakthrough, experimental treatments through an open research funding platform.
As LCL evolves into a therapeutics platform, they plan to find the most promising treatments as a community, and to quickly treat patients and publish results, leapfrogging slower government and academic efforts with faster, more agile trials.
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