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The Clodomiro Picado Institute of Costa Rica announced on Tuesday that after manufacturing a first test batch, it is ready to process the plasma of patients recovered from COVID-19 in search of a drug to treat the disease. The aforementioned institution, a specialist in the production of snake antivenoms, develops the project at the request of the Costa Rican Social Security Fund (CCSS) and stated that the results obtained in the test batch were very satisfactory.
The test verified that everything is ready to receive the plasma from the convalescent people of COVID-19 when the CCSS sends it, to later produce the formulation of purified and concentrated immunoglobulins that could be injected into patients to treat the disease. The objective is to work on a plasma-based treatment against COVID-19 donated by the recovered people.
If a person successfully recovers from COVID-19, his body generates an immunity (resistance) that can be extracted from the plasma of his blood and used to save the life of other people with acute symptoms caused by the SARS-CoV virus- 2.
That immunity is thanks to the antibodies or immunoglobulins that neutralize said virus.
“We ran a test run simply to verify that the line was running well, and the results were very satisfactory. The precipitation occurred in the way we expected and we were able to obtain more than 50 vials from a 25-liter plasma process, ”the coordinator of the Institute’s Industrial Division, Guillermo León, explained in statements to the press.
This test was performed with plasma from patients who have not had the disease, with the sole purpose of fine-tuning the production system.
To carry out this process, the Institute had to modify its production laboratory, with the aim of incorporating an alternative line for processing human plasma. Since it is a completely different line from the one used in the preparation of anti-opid serums, which is what the entity is dedicated to.
“The work of these last weeks we have focused on the production of antivenoms and thus fill our warehouses with enough product to satisfy demand. This will give us space and clear the agenda of the clean room with the idea of processing, without further delay, the plasma at the moment that the CCSS sends it, “stressed León.
Costa Rica also announced last week that it will work on the research and development of its own tests to diagnose the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes the disease of COVID-19, and that it will release the information for use by other countries. .
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