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Monoclonal antibodies that prevent the coronavirus from spreading in the body are among the promising strategies to prevent serious illness from Covid-19 before vaccines arrive, said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Antibody-based drugs, other blood products from recovered patients and antivirals are being investigated as early treatments, Fauci said. The goal is to prevent patients from developing the severe lung damage for which Gilead Sciences Inc.’s remdesivir and the anti-inflammatory drug dexamethasone are administered.
“We are focusing a lot now on treating early infection and or preventing infection,” Fauci told the Journal of the American Medical Association in an interview Friday. “And that’s the bridge to the vaccine.”
Immunization against SARS-CoV-2 could begin in the US in November or December, Fauci said, although it will likely take until at least the third quarter of 2021 for enough Americans to be protected against the pandemic virus to decrease significantly. your threat. Fauci said 100 million doses of vaccines can be produced by December, and that the six companies supplying the United States should have made 700 million doses by next April.
Since vaccines have not yet been shown to prevent Covid-19, health authorities should continue to push for new treatments and measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus, said Robert “Chip” Schooley, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego, who is studying stronger versions of an existing antiviral.
“Optimally, we would have an oral antiviral drug that you can give to more people at an earlier stage of the disease,” Schooley said. Vaccines may not be 100% effective, “which is better than nothing, but we will still have to rely on drugs and behavior modifications for a long time.”
Highly successful studies published by the journal Science on Thursday showed that about 14% of critically ill Covid-19 patients have altered levels of a substance called interferon that helps orchestrate the body’s defense against viral pathogens.
The finding opens up new strategies for identifying high-risk patients and treating them with infusions of interferon or, in some cases, removing interferon-blocking antibodies from the blood in a procedure called plasmapheresis.
Interferon, which is already being studied in dozens of clinical trials, could improve the effectiveness of antiviral drugs if given early in an infection, according to Stanley Perlman, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, who has studied coronaviruses for 38 years.
Infusions of neutralizing antibodies to the coronavirus can also reduce the amount of virus in patients at the onset of an infection, preventing an overreaction that is behind most life-threatening cases, said Thomas File, an infectious disease physician at Akron. , Ohio, and president of the Infectious Disease Society of America.
Monoclonal antibodies, a product made by cloning an antibody captured from the blood of a patient who recovered from Covid-19, could also be given to high-risk patients in nursing homes as a preventive treatment, Fauci said. Ely Lilly & Co.’s experimental antibody LY-CoV555 showed some hopeful signs in an outpatient trial, the company said Sept. 16.
“We are cautiously optimistic that monoclonal antibodies may be an important treatment for early disease,” Fauci said Sept. 10 in an online briefing for Massachusetts General Hospital staff. “We need something to keep people out of the hospital.”
‘Complicated medicine’
Dexamethasone and similar steroid drugs could cause harm if given too early in the course of a Covid-19 illness, said Shane Crotty, a professor at the Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccine Research at the La Jolla Institute of Immunology in California.
“Steroids have definitely proven valuable in very sick people, but it is a complicated medicine,” Crotty said in an interview. The drug inhibits a part of the immune system from going “crazy” and causing harmful inflammation, as well as the part of the immune system that makes antibodies to fight infection.
The issue highlights the need for treatments to fight the virus while supporting the immune system, and regimens that can be mixed and matched depending on the body’s success in fighting the infection, said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Research and Policy. of Infectious Diseases at the University of Minnesota.
“This is part of the dance with this virus,” Osterholm said. “You’re trying to take the best of the host and improve it, and take the worst of the host and suppress it.”
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Antibody-based drugs, other blood products from recovered patients and antivirals are being investigated as early treatments, Fauci said. The goal is to prevent patients from developing the severe lung damage for which Gilead Sciences Inc.’s remdesivir and the anti-inflammatory drug dexamethasone are administered.
“We are focusing a lot now on treating early infection and or preventing infection,” Fauci told the Journal of the American Medical Association in an interview Friday. “And that’s the bridge to the vaccine.”
Immunization against SARS-CoV-2 could begin in the US in November or December, Fauci said, although it will likely take until at least the third quarter of 2021 for enough Americans to be protected against the pandemic virus to decrease significantly. your threat. Fauci said 100 million doses of vaccines can be produced by December, and that the six companies supplying the United States should have made 700 million doses by next April.
Since vaccines have not yet been shown to prevent Covid-19, health authorities should continue to push for new treatments and measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus, said Robert “Chip” Schooley, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego, who is studying stronger versions of an existing antiviral.
“Optimally, we would have an oral antiviral drug that you can give to more people at an earlier stage of the disease,” Schooley said. Vaccines may not be 100% effective, “which is better than nothing, but we will still have to rely on drugs and behavior modifications for a long time.”
Highly successful studies published by the journal Science on Thursday showed that about 14% of critically ill Covid-19 patients have altered levels of a substance called interferon that helps orchestrate the body’s defense against viral pathogens.
The finding opens up new strategies for identifying high-risk patients and treating them with infusions of interferon or, in some cases, removing interferon-blocking antibodies from the blood in a procedure called plasmapheresis.
Interferon, which is already being studied in dozens of clinical trials, could improve the effectiveness of antiviral drugs if given early in an infection, according to Stanley Perlman, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, who has studied coronaviruses for 38 years.
Infusions of neutralizing antibodies to the coronavirus can also reduce the amount of virus in patients at the onset of an infection, preventing an overreaction that is behind most life-threatening cases, said Thomas File, an infectious disease physician at Akron. , Ohio, and president of the Infectious Disease Society of America.
Monoclonal antibodies, a product made by cloning an antibody captured from the blood of a patient who recovered from Covid-19, could also be given to high-risk patients in nursing homes as a preventive treatment, Fauci said. Ely Lilly & Co.’s experimental antibody LY-CoV555 showed some hopeful signs in an outpatient trial, the company said Sept. 16.
“We are cautiously optimistic that monoclonal antibodies may be an important treatment for early disease,” Fauci said Sept. 10 in an online briefing for Massachusetts General Hospital staff. “We need something to keep people out of the hospital.”
‘Complicated medicine’
Dexamethasone and similar steroid drugs could cause harm if given too early in the course of a Covid-19 illness, said Shane Crotty, a professor at the Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccine Research at the La Jolla Institute of Immunology in California.
“Steroids have definitely proven valuable in very sick people, but it is a complicated medicine,” Crotty said in an interview. The drug inhibits a part of the immune system from going “crazy” and causing harmful inflammation, as well as the part of the immune system that makes antibodies to fight infection.
The issue highlights the need for treatments to fight the virus while supporting the immune system, and regimens that can be mixed and matched depending on the body’s success in fighting the infection, said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Research and Policy. of Infectious Diseases at the University of Minnesota.
“This is part of the dance with this virus,” Osterholm said. “You’re trying to take the best of the host and improve it, and take the worst of the host and suppress it.”
