Histogen Inc. announced that the company has signed an exclusive license agreement with Johns Hopkins University. The intellectual property associated with this license covers the use of emricasan for the treatment of disease in humans resulting from viral or bacterial infections (including, but not limited to, MRSA, VRSA, and SARS-CoV-2). The license agreement with Johns Hopkins is an instrumental addition to Histogen's intellectual property portfolio.

Rights to these patent applications, together with recently issued internal patents, are expected to provide freedom to operate and exclusivity worldwide to the Histogen's entire caspase inhibitor portfolio. As announced previously, emricasan improved symptoms in patients infected with COVD-19 potentially employing a similar mechanism of protecting the competence of the immune system. Patients in the placebo arm who completed the study showed either delay or no symptom resolution for the duration of the study.