Histogen Inc. and its partner Amerimmune, LLC announced additional findings from its Phase 1 study of emricasan in mild symptomatic COVID-19 patients to assess safety, tolerability, and preliminary efficacy. As previously reported, emricasan was shown to be safe and well tolerated during the 14 days of dosing and at the day 45 follow up, as compared to placebo, with no reports of serious adverse events. Patients who completed treatment with emricasan had a complete resolution of the symptoms most commonly associated in mild COVID-19, such as a cough, headache, and fatigue at day 7 and continued through day 45. The p-value was p<0.007. Patients in the placebo arm who completed the study showed either delay or no symptom resolution for the duration of the study. Further analysis of the laboratory and exploratory biomarkers from the patients in this study shed critical insight into potential mechanisms of COVID-19 and how emricasan blocks this process to prevent disease progression. First, in the emricasan cohort, there was an increase in certain blood immune cell numbers, which play an important role in immunity against viruses. Second, patients that received emricasan showed normalization of several serum markers related to increased risk for blood clotting that are typically elevated in individuals with COVID-19. Third, substances that leak from dying cells in the body decreased and normalized in the emricasan cohort. These findings correlated with trends toward better immunity to SARS CoV2. Collectively, this data points to the role of emricasan in mild COVID19 and cell death as the core problem in COVID-19.