Reducing the Fatality Rate of COVID-19 by Applying Clinical Insights From Immuno-Oncology and Lung Transplantation

There is an urgent need to identify effective strategies that can stop or reverse the inflammatory process that causes acute lung injury, ARDS, and multi-organ failure in COVID-19. Adaptive clinical trials with parallel enrollment to different arms each evaluating a rationally designed combination modality could provide the foundation for the accelerated identification of effective and safe multi-modality treatment algorithms for COVID-19 pneumonia. This article summarizes the insights and lessons learned from clinical immune-oncology trials as well as lung transplantation that are informing the clinical development of promising new strategies aimed at reducing the fatality rate in COVID-19.