Next big COVID-19 treatment may be manufactured antibodies

designed specifically to attack this new virus.

“Antibodies can block infectivity. That is a fact,” Regeneron Pharmaceuticals executive Christos Kyratsous told Reuters. Eli Lilly and Co, AstraZeneca, Amgen, and GlaxoSmithKline were cleared by the US government to pool manufacturing resources in order to scale up supplies if any of these drugs prove successful.

Still, drugmakers say monoclonal antibodies could temporarily prevent infection in at-risk people such as medical workers and the elderly. They could also be used as a therapeutic bridge until vaccines become widely available. Safety risks for monoclonal antibodies are considered low, but their cost can be quite high. These type of drugs for cancer can cost over $100,000 a year.

Researchers in a recent paper published in the journal _Nature _ said they had discovered several new, very potent, antibodies directed to an area where the virus attaches to human cells and to a region of the spike that has not attracted attention.

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