For several months now, the medical and research community are trying their best to speed up the processes of finding a coronavirus drug and a vaccine that can finally help us beat the virus and the highly contagious and deadly disease it brings.
Now a new drug has been discovered, and experts are looking into it further to see whether it can actually cure COVID-19 patients and provide them with limited immunity against the viral infection.
Antibody Drugs Against COVID-19
In a report by BGR, this breakthrough medication is a sort of antibody-drug, which is a therapy similar to providing the patent with plasma transfusion with the antibodies of a successfully recovered patient.
However, the news outlet noted that this isn't like the usual plasma therapy in the sense that it does not require plasma donations.
Instead, these drugs are synthetically made and generated in labs.
Plasma therapies are popular around the world, with promising reports from various researches being done in different parts of the world, including in the US, Japan, the Netherlands, and Israel.
South Korea Company Working on Coronavirus Antibody Cure
When it comes to antibody drugs, South Korea is one of the leading countries that working on it, with Celltrion, a local company, planning to start the clinical trials for it this July after the development is completed.
According to Business Korea, the country might be the first one to develop such medication if they become successful with their human clinical trials.
The company has recently acquired antibody candidates and has also begun developing cell lines, so it won't be too long until they are able to try it out and see how it fares against the coronavirus.
They are also working on 14 different antibodies, which could help increase their chances of finding an antibody-drug that could help the world in this time of need.
Besides South Korea, other pharmaceutical companies are focusing on developing antibody COVID-19 drugs.
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More Companies on the Work
One particular company working on it is a drug company known as Regeneron, which aren't new in the field as they have already developed antibodies that can help treat various other diseases like cancer.
As per Fast Company, Regeneron already has two antibody drug candidates that use selected antibodies that can hold the longest to the protein spikes of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which it then uses to hold onto a healthy cell.
The drugs will undergo human clinical trials in June, a month earlier than Celltrion's and if all goes well, the company said that it would have hundreds of thousands of antibody drugs ready by August.
A few other companies working on antibody drugs are Vir Biotechnology and GlaxoSmithKline that are trying to work on two other antibody candidates.
There's also Eli Lilly, AbCellera, Junshi Biosciences, and Vanderbilt University, among others that are tirelessly working on a possible COVID-19 cure that could also help provide temporary immunity to patients.
Lockdowns and quarantines are easing up in different cities, states, and countries, so a coronavirus antibody drug that could also provide some immunity could help with this imminent reopening.
