The Potential Alzheimer’s Disease Drug, GM‐CSF, Enhances the Anti‐Viral Immune Response and Reduces Mortality in a Mouse Model of COVID‐19

COVID‐19 results in increased expression of inflammatory cytokines and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) biomarkers of neuronal damage, but inflammation‐targeting clinical trials have yielded poor to mixed results. Our studies of other disorders with an inflammatory component, including AD, chemobrain, Down syndrome, normal aging, and West Nile Virus infection, showed that treatment with the ‘pro‐inflammatory’ cytokine granulocyte‐macrophage colony‐stimulating factor (GM‐CSF) in humans or mouse models alleviated clinical, behavioral, and pathological features. Most recently, we completed a Phase 2 clinical trial (NCT01409915) using sargramostim/Leukine (rhuGM‐CSF) in mild‐to‐moderate AD participants, which showed that three weeks of sargramostim treatment improved MMSE scores and improved ATN blood biomarkers of AD pathology (Potter et al., 2021). Therefore, we proposed that human GM‐CSF may be repurposed to promote both the innate and adaptive immune responses in COVID‐19 patients to reduce viral load and mortality.