Dr. X could not help her sick family members, but her eagerness to do something grew. She knew that in China, plasma from recovered people, which contains antibodies to the virus, was showing promise as a treatment. Her doctor told her about a project, a collaboration between Vanderbilt University and AstraZeneca, to develop something safer and more powerful. It aims to go beyond the mishmash of antibodies in convalescent plasma and pull out the equivalent of a guided missile: an antibody that “neutralizes” the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 by binding to the so-called spike protein that enables it to enter human cells. Once one or several neutralizing antibodies have been identified, antibody-producing B cells can be engineered to make them in quantity. These so-called monoclonal antibodies could treat or even prevent COVID-19.

The Vanderbilt-AstraZeneca team is far from the only group trying to identify or engineer monoclonals against SARS-CoV-2. Unlike the many repurposed drugs now being tested in COVID-19 patients, including the modestly effective remdesivir, the immune proteins specifically target this virus. Whereas some groups hope to sieve a neutralizing antibody (a “neut”) from the blood of a survivor like Dr. X, others are trying to produce a neut in mice by injecting them with the spike protein. Still others aim to re-engineer an existing antibody or even create one directly from DNA sequences.

Many researchers are optimistic that antibodies will, relatively quickly, prove their worth as a preventive or remedy that buys the world time until a vaccine arrives—if it does. “We’ve got at least 50—and probably more we don’t know about—companies and academic labs that are all racing horses,” says immunologist Erica Ollmann Saphire of the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, who leads an effort to coordinate and evaluate these candidates. Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, which developed a cocktail of three monoclonal antibodies that worked against the Ebola virus—a notoriously difficult disease to treat—may be out of the gates first with a candidate monoclonal drug entering clinical trials as soon as next month. 

Click here for reference