Coronavirus vaccine maker is also developing a promising COVID-19 drug

[Chris Smith]

• A brand new type of coronavirus treatment is gaining more traction among researchers: Monoclonal antibody therapies that can be used to treat COVID-19 patients and provide limited protection against infection.
• AstraZeneca is also involved in testing such novel drugs, and the company just released more news about its progress on the antibodies it licensed from Vanderbilt University to test against COVID-19.
• A promising therapy consisting of two antibodies will be tested on humans after the antibodies proved to be effective at neutralizing the virus in lab settings.

The first coronavirus vaccines might be ready for public use in late 2020, assuming everything goes well during the last stages of human testing, but it will take years for pharmaceutical companies to manufacture enough of the vaccine to meet demand. Immunizing the global population might be even more challenging if COVID-19 immunity turns out to be short-lived. Dr. Anthony Fauci and other experts warned that protection could last between six and twelve months, which is the case for the four known human coronaviruses that cause common colds. If that turns out to be the case for SARS-CoV-2, then people could catch the disease again after the acquired immunity wanes.

However, researchers studying new COVID-19 therapies aren’t placing all their eggs in the same basket. More than 130 teams are working on vaccines, but many hospitals are running trials with existing medicines that can be used to hasten recovery — remdesivir is one such example. More importantly, other researches are looking at brand new drugs that can combine the best of both worlds. They can both treat existing COVID-19 patients and provide limited protection to people who haven’t contracted the disease.

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Coronavirus vaccine maker is also developing a promising COVID-19 drug originally appeared on BGR.com on Tue, 9 Jun 2020 at 21:13:38 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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