The government is “earnestly seeking” COVID-19 patients to try out a promising new treatment for the virus — antibodies made in a lab.
People who get sick create neutralizing antibodies to attack specific viruses or other pathogens. A Canadian company discovered the right antibody for the new coronavirus and worked with the National Institutes of Health to isolate it from an early COVID-19 patient in Washington state.
Eli Lilly and Company, of Indiana, synthesized copies of it in a lab, creating what are known as monoclonal antibodies that target a specific part of the spike protein of the coronavirus. Now, the NIH says it needs volunteers for Phase 2 and 3 trials of the treatment to see if the monoclonal antibodies reduce the severity of COVID-19 or can save lives.
“The fundamental strategy of this is to interfere with the virus’s ability to infect,” Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told reporters Tuesday.
The NIH is seeking both outpatient volunteers and hospitalized persons for the separate trials, which will enroll 2,000 people overall.
Scientists think they can gather usable data by October, as Eli Lilly pushes to produce 100,000 doses by the end of the year. Other companies would likely add their muscle if the monoclonal antibodies prove effective, though it is an intensive process requiring plenty of manufacturing power.
“The amount of capacity needed for this is probably unprecedented in our industry,” said Dan Skovronsky, the chief scientific officer at Eli Lilly.
It is the latest arrow in the quiver of therapies being used against the coronavirus, which has upended normal life since March and killed over 155,000 people in the U.S.
President Trump is eagerly promoting drugs and treatments for the disease as efforts to restrict social behavior fall short, leading to flare-ups of infection and economic woe.
The U.S. is distributing remdesivir, an antiviral from Gilead Sciences that’s been shown to speed up recovery time for patients, and it is deploying dexamethasone, a steroid that British researchers found to be effective in saving the lives of patients requiring oxygen or a ventilator.
The administration is also pleading with COVID-19 survivors to donate their antibody-rich blood plasma, which can be used to help current patients fight off the disease.
Mr. Trump last week visited the American Red Cross headquarters in Washington to cheer on a coronavirus survivor as he donated his plasma.
