A team of Chinese researchers managed to isolate several antibodies which can be extremely efficient in preventing the new coronavirus to enter cells. Thus, the expectation is that the discovery can be effective in prevention and not treatment from the Covid-19.
The disease emerged in December 2019 in China and has already spread across the world, infecting more than 850,000 people and causing 42,000 deaths. Currently, no proven effective form of treatment for the disease has yet been discovered.
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Second Zhang Linqi, from the Tsinghua University, from Beijing, a drug based on antibodies, like those discovered by his group, could be used more efficiently than current approaches. For him, current treatments are borderline”, such as plasma, which contains antibodies, but has limited action due to the type of blood.
Zhang's team, along with a group from Shenzhen's 3rd People's Hospital, began antibody analyzes of blood drawn from recovered Covid-19 patients in early January. In these samples, the researchers isolated 206 monoclonal antibodies with a strong ability to bind to the proteins of the
virus.Then a test was performed to see if it was possible to prevent the virus from entering the cells. Among the approximately 20 antibodies tested, four were able to prevent viral entry, with two being very good at blocking the virus, according to Zhang.
After these tests, the team seeks to identify the strongest antibodies to possibly combine them to reduce the risk of new coronavirus mutation.
If the scientists' efforts are successful, the next step is to mass-produce the antibodies for testing on animals and, later, on humans. The group has already established a partnership with Brii Biosciences, a Chinese-US biotechnology company, which is seeking diverse candidates for a prophylactic and therapeutic intervention.
As Zhang explains, antibodies have been proven to be important in medicine for decades. In this way, antibodies are used to treat cancer, autoimmune diseases, and infectious diseases.
Even if they are not a vaccine, there is a possibility that antibodies are applied to people in the risk group to prevent them from contracting Covid-19.
There is still no forecast for the launch of the treatment with antibodies, but the pandemic it accelerates the drug production steps, which, in general, take more than two years to obtain authorization for use in patients.
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