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The online newspaper: It seems that there are two ways to end a world in a state of emergency: a vaccine that neutralizes the virus or a new method of treatment that reduces the danger of the virus.
There are currently 10 vaccines in the final testing phase and the first results are expected by the end of the month.
A cure for covid-19
But great things are also happening on the treatment front.
“This is the best opportunity we have to change the rules of the game,” National Institutes of Health Director Francis S. Collins told the Washington Post.
The solution you are talking about is what in technical language is called “monoclonal antibodies”, which are antibodies that are mass produced in a laboratory. This is not a new technology, but it was crowned with the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1984.
Antibodies are the body’s first line defense against viral infections that we have already suffered and what gives us immunity to diseases that we have had in the past.
By mass-producing these antibodies in the lab and using them as medicine, after you’ve gotten sick, you can shortly bypass the entire vaccination process.
The main job of a vaccine is to get the body to make antibodies and T-cell immunity to a virus, but an antibody drug can give you parts of the same defense.
– Rapid reduction in the amount of viruses and symptoms.
Earlier this week, Regeneron announced the first data from a major study in which they tested a drug with two types of antibodies.
– After months of incredibly hard work, we are very happy to be able to state that Regenero’s antibody cocktail, REGN-COV2, rapidly reduced the number of viruses and associated symptoms in COVID-19 patients, said Regeneron’s CEO. , George D. Yancopoulos, in a press release.
– The greatest effect of the drug was administered to patients whose immune system had not begun to fight the virus, suggesting that the drug may be a therapeutic surrogate for the natural immune response. These patients were less likely to get rid of the virus on their own, and therefore had a higher risk of long-term disease. We are very encouraged by how robust and consistent the results are, he says.
Several companies are on the ball
Eli Lilly announced in early September a so-called “proof of concept” for its own solution, which will be faster to produce than the Regeneron variant because it only uses one type of antibody. According to their data, the risk of hospitalization with their medications was reduced by 72 percent.
Pharmaceutical giant Astra Zeneca, which is also behind the so-called Oxford vaccine, announced that it will begin phase 1 studies of its own antibody treatment in late August.
Medical technology is being tested for three different uses:
Prevent symptoms in people who have been exposed to the virus Help people early in the course of the disease recover quickly Help hospitalized people
Help millions, not billions
However, according to the Washington Post, this method of treatment has a significant disadvantage, if it turns out to work as desired: the production capacity is very limited, and it is a growing process that cannot be started.
Worse still is perhaps the fact that the production capacity that exists today is used primarily to make drugs for autoimmune diseases and cancer. Therefore, a new prioritization can have important consequences.
– I pray to God that this drug works, but in the short term, there will be a problem with producing enough for all the patients who need it, says Howard Levine, head of BioProcess Technology Group at the auditing firm BDO, in Washington. Mail.
Regeneron has signed a collaboration agreement with the pharmaceutical giant Roche, and they plan to produce between 650,000 and 2 million doses of treatment per year.
Eli Lilly, for her part, hopes to have produced a million doses of her less complicated medicine by New Years.
– Vaccines can be mass produced for billions of people. Antibodies could be for millions of people, says Phil Pang at Vir Biotechnology.
