Companies are testing what may be the next best thing to a vaccine: drugs that deliver antibodies to fight the virus right away, without having to train the immune system to make them. 9News
"The hope there is to target people who are in the first week of their illness and that we can treat them with the antibody and prevent them from getting sick," said Dr. Marshall Lyon, an infectious disease specialist helping to test one such drug at Emory University in Atlanta.Vaccines are seen as a key to controlling the virus, which has been confirmed to have infected more than 20 million people worldwide and killed more than 738,000.
"Our goal is to get something out as soon as possible" and to have hundreds of thousands of doses ready by fall, said Lilly's chief scientific officer, Dr. Daniel Skovronsky. Regeneron's drug uses two antibodies to enhance chances the drug will work even if the virus evolves to evade action by one. "I'm cautiously optimistic" about the drugs, said the nation's top infectious diseases expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci. "I'm heartened by the experience that we had with Ebola," where the drugs proved effective.— The antibodies may not reach all of the places in the body where they need to act, such as deep in the lungs. All the antibody drugs are given through an IV and must make their way through the bloodstream to wherever they're needed.
— The antibodies might not last long enough. If they fade within a month, it's still OK for treatment since COVID-19 illness usually resolves in that time. But for prevention, it may not be practical to give infusions more often than every month or two.
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