A laboratory in China is developing a drug that is believed to have the power to bring the coronavirus pandemic to a halt without a vaccine. The novel coronavirus outbreak first emerged in China last year.
The prestigious laboratory of China, Peking University, is developing a drug that could potentially help to fight the pandemic. As per the researchers, the drug, if developed, can not only shorten the recovery time of the infected patient but also offer short-term immunity against the virus. The director of the University’s Beijing advanced innovation center for genomics Sunney Xie told the media that the drug has been successful in the animal testing phase. He said,
“When we injected neutralizing antibodies into infected mice, after five days the viral load was reduced by a factor of 2,500. That means this potential drug has (a) therapeutic effect.”
The drug reportedly uses antibodies present in the human immune system and therefore prevents the virus from infecting cells. This was carried out on the virus-infected cells that were isolated from the blood of the 60 recovered patients. The study on the research that was published in Sunday’s scientific journal cell says that the drug might be the potential cure for COVID-19 and also shortens the recovery time. Xie’s team has been working day and night searching the antibody. He further told,
“Our expertise is single-cell genomics rather than immunology or virology. When we realized that the single-cell genomic approach can effectively find the neutralizing antibody we were thrilled.”
The drug might be available later this year
Xie said that the clinical trials for the drug are underway in Australia and other countries. The decision to carry out trials in other countries was because of the lack of new cases in China. According to Xie, the drug should be available anytime later in the year and hopefully in time for the predicted winter outbreak of the virus.
More than 100 COVID-19 vaccines have been under development around the world. China itself has 5 different vaccines under trial. The WHO had warned that a vaccine could take 12-18 months ideally. The only hope of Xie and his team is that the drug could become a faster and effective way to stop the pandemic that has already affected millions around the world.
Source: Livemint
