ahmedabad at a time when companies and research organizations across the world are racing to find a cure for covid19 pandemic ahmedabad based cadila pharmaceuticals in partnership with indias premier research organization council of scientific and industrial research csir seems to be on the path of a major breakthroughafter successful testing on four sarscov2 patients including one critically ill the phase iii clinical trials for the immunomodulator sepsivac is set to begin this week according to two officials close to the development and if everything goes as planned the immunomodulator will be out in the market in less than two months they addedthe drug is manufactured by at the cadila pharmaceuticals facility in dholka on the outskirts of ahmedabadunder a public private partnership platform cadila pharma and csir have decided to repurpose sepsivac which is used for treatment of leprosy and is considered a game changer for patients suffering from gramnegative sepsisrecently four covid19 patients including one who was critically ill all admitted at postgraduate institute of medical education and research pgimer chandigarh recovered after being treated with sepsivac the drug controller general of india dgci has already shown a green light for conducting human trials said sources company officials had recently in a video conferencing with 70 leading pharma stockists from across the country updated them about the success of sepsivac on covid19 patientsthe trials will be held simultaneously on 50 critical patients 480 noncritical patients and 4000 persons who are have high chances of being infected including healthcare workers safai kamdaarsetc said an industry official the recruitment process for conducting the trials will soon begin he added multiple hospitals in the country have been roped in for conducting clinical trials including the all india institute of medical science aiims new delhisepsivac is used to modulate the immune system by lessening the probability of the cytokine storm and as a result it reduces the chances for mortality while improving the healing processcsir researchers have found similarity between the clinical characteristics of covid19 patient symptoms and gramnegative sepsisthe drug uses the mycobacterium w formally known as mycobacterium indicus pranii as it produces a different immunesystem responsethe dholka facility already has a stock of 50000 sepsivac vaccines and it can be scaled up to meet the expected demand said a senior company official he said that cadila pharma was perhaps the first indian company to start clinical trials on large groups