Originally Posted by
doctoravios
Another very frustrating press release from the WHO:
https://www.who.int/news-room/commen...xt-of-covid-19
This is exactly the kind of panic-inducing message which leads to a loss of public trust in governments/NGOs. It would be just as accurate to have stated, "There is currently no evidence that people who have recovered from COVID-19 and have antibodies
aren't protected from a second infection." Quite why they have chosen to make this kind of statement publicly, I don't know.
What is their reasoning for issuing this announcement?
I heard Ecuador was planning to issue "immunity cards" to those thought to be recovered from infections. Similar schemes under consideration in other countries.
Maybe they wanted certain studies to be completed before people rush to declare people immune?
They’re taking advantage of sophisticated technologies developed over the past two decades to create exquisitely targeted medicines. If they work, the therapies could be used in two crucial ways: to treat those already infected and, in the absence of a vaccine, as a short-term prophylactic for those at high risk.
Normally it can take five or more years to develop a drug and move it into human trials. No one wants to wait that long.
AstraZeneca,
Vir Biotechnology, and
Eli Lilly and its biotech partner,
AbCellera Biologics, as well as several
academic labs, are hoping to start human trials by the end of summer. If all goes well, antibody treatments for those most in need could be available by fall.
An overview of antibody therapies, including existing ones being tested and new ones being developed for C19.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/featu...ntil-a-vaccine
Monoclonal antibody technology was created in 1975 but it's very expensive. They aren't typically used for infectious diseases, rather cancer and autoimmune diseases.
But a Vancouver company developed a process to use machine vision to sort through millions of antibodies:
A few years ago, Vancouver-based AbCellera invented a credit card-size “lab on a chip” device that uses machine vision to test hundreds of thousands of antibody-producing cells at once. The company showed that in only 55 days it could isolate influenza-neutralizing antibodies from human blood that were effective enough to protect mice against an otherwise lethal dose of the virus.
In the current crisis, AbCellera started with blood from a patient who’d recovered from Covid-19. It received the sample on Feb. 25, began screening antibody-producing cells four days later, and by March 3 had sorted through 5 million of them, finding 500 antibodies that bound to the virus’s spike protein.
Rick Bright, the guy Trump fired from the HHS department for vaccine development, contacted Regeneron to have them work on a therapy for C19:
When pandemic fears were becoming a reality in late January, among the first calls Rick Bright made was to Regeneron CEO Leonard Schleifer. Bright is the director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or Barda, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Barda has given Regeneron about $300 million over the past five years to work on Ebola, influenza, and other diseases. “They liked us because we said we could go extremely fast,” Kyratsous says. Bright urged Regeneron to make Covid-19 its top priority. Schleifer immediately agreed.
Kyratsous was already at work. When Chinese researchers shared the gene sequence of the coronavirus in mid-January, his team ordered synthetic DNA for the spike protein for a couple of hundred dollars per sample. They injected the synthetic DNA into genetically engineered mice. No need to collect blood from recovered patients; the mice generate human antibodies in about a month.
Researchers are looking for specific parts fo the spike protein to target, because the virus is mutating, including parts of the spike protein:
At the same time, scientists around the world have found more than 3,000 gene sequences of the virus, from Asia, Europe, and North America, Kyratsous says, and they’re not all identical. The virus is evolving. Some parts of the protein spikes so central to finding a treatment are mutating, meaning they could potentially evade an attack. Regeneron is looking specifically for antibodies that latch onto the spots that aren’t evolving. “We want antibodies that bind tightly, neutralizing the virus, and are binding to sites that are not changing very frequently or not at all. That’s how we’re screening,” Kyratsous says.
Regeneron hopes to start human trials by end of June. Other companies such as Lilly are around July:
They’re taking advantage of sophisticated technologies developed over the past two decades to create exquisitely targeted medicines. If they work, the therapies could be used in two crucial ways: to treat those already infected and, in the absence of a vaccine, as a short-term prophylactic for those at high risk.
Normally it can take five or more years to develop a drug and move it into human trials. No one wants to wait that long. AstraZeneca, Vir Biotechnology, and Eli Lilly and its biotech partner, AbCellera Biologics, as well as several academic labs, are hoping to start human trials by the end of summer. If all goes well, antibody treatments for those most in need could be available by fall.
The bottleneck is manufacturing. Monocolonal antibodies are typically specialty medications so there isn't high volume manufacturing capacity. There is talk of competitors sharing manufacturing capacity for the first therapy which proves effective. Regeneron hopes to produce 200k prophylactic doses a month in August. But for treatment, patients may require as much as 10x the prophylactic dose so in that case, the volume decreases by an order of magnitude, 20k doses a month.