Antibodies made in labs could help sickest
Government adviser backs manufactured duplication of natural process to avoid most serious stage of virus
SOME of the sickest coronavirus patients could be injected with lab-made antibodies on arrival at hospital to help their bodies fight off the disease, according to a government adviser.
Prof Peter Openshaw, who sits on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies’ clinical information group, said that biotech therapies being trialled were potentially “very exciting” treatments.
The drugs, known as monoclonal antibodies, are based on antibodies produced by people who have recovered from coronavirus, and are the first potential new medicines specifically designed to attack the virus.
Prof Openshaw said such treatments would result in antibodies circulating in a patient’s bloodstream “within half an hour”, unlike vaccines, which could take “weeks” to stimulate the body into producing a similar response.
“One particular benefit might be that it could prevent progression to the severe disease sometimes seen in people who present with initial respiratory symptoms,” he said. “Boosting their antibody levels as soon as they arrive in hospital could mean they don’t go on to develop all the severe complications that happen in a minority of patients.”
Prof Openshaw, who works in experimental medicine at Imperial College London, said British scientists were now awaiting the results of human trials that showed the effect of injecting monoclonal antibodies into Covid-19 patients in hospitals.
Unlike drugs such as the steroid dexamethasone, monoclonal antibodies have been specifically designed to attack the virus, and can be given to patients much earlier in the course of it.
Two US pharma firms, Eli Lilly and Regeneron, launched the first safety studies of monoclonal antibodies therapies in humans last month.
Prof Openshaw said: “It’s potentially a very exciting therapy, and the field has advanced remarkably over recent years in the ability to produce antibodies in factories or labs in bulk necessary for such a treatment to work.”
Last month, Dr Nick Cammack, who is leading the global search for coronavirus therapeutics at UK biomedical research charity Wellcome, told The Telegraph that monoclonal antibodies would “fast forward” the body’s immune response to the disease, and prevent it from going into the immune system overdrive that can kill patients.
Antibodies only have to be harvested from a recovered patient once as the cells can be grown an infinite number of times, in a process Dr Cammack compared to a sourdough bread starter.
He said such a treatment could be injected into residents in areas struck by Covid-19 outbreaks, as a preventive measure in the absence of a vaccine.
Prof Openshaw agreed that a monoclonal antibody treatment could be used “prophylactically” but added: “Inducing the immune system to make its own antibody seems the best way in trying to protect people, rather than giving them passive immunity by injecting them with antibody which will over time disappear. The antibody won’t be long lasting, and you’ll be back to square one in terms of vulnerability. If you can use a vaccine to induce a volunteer to develop their own antibody, that’s going to give, we hope and expect more durable immunity.”