| An old malaria drug touted on social media by President Donald Trump is getting most of the headlines about potential new Covid-19 treatments. But a newfangled antibody technology is what many experts think will yield the first targeted treatments against the virus.
So-called monoclonal antibodies are best known as super-expensive treatments for cancer and autoimmune diseases. But antibodies have a long history in helping treat or prevent infections as well.
North of New York City, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, known for macular degeneration and severe eczema treatments, has quietly been working to develop an industrialized operation to make new antibodies for a rapid response to a pandemic. It’s done it once already – the company’s combo drug worked against Ebola, a notoriously difficult to-treat-virus.
Of course, it’s possible an already existing medicine, such as Trump’s favored antimalaria pill, may save the day. More promising, according to many, is Gilead Sciences’ remdesivir, an experimental antiviral that before the pandemic had already shown activity against other coronaviruses in the lab.
But if off-the-shelf approaches don’t work, researchers will need to come up with custom-designed countermeasures. A vaccine, of course, is the ultimate solution, but trials of those are slow. Purpose-built antiviral pills would also be great, but that’s also a painstaking process.
Antibodies, as I and Susan Berfield detailed in a Bloomberg Businessweek feature, can move quickly into human trials and provide a potential bridge to the time a vaccine is ready.
Regeneron hopes to bring an antibody cocktail targeted against the coronavirus into human trials by June and have results by the fall. Production capacity will likely be limited – antibodies are much harder to manufacture than pills.
But industry veterans are hopeful at least one of the antibody approaches will pay off. More shots taken means a greater likelihood of a hit.
Says Mene Pangalos, head of biopharmaceutical research and development at AstraZeneca, which is also developing antibody treatments for Covid-19: “Having several approaches in the clinic from us and others is going to increase the chances of one of us getting something through to the finish line and having a successful therapy.” —Robert Langreth |