A human monoclonal 1 antibody blocking SARS-CoV-2 infection

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.11.987958v1

by TeeWEE • 6 years ago

209 71 6 years ago

biorxiv.org

TeeWEE• 6 years ago

This is the paper submitted for review https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.11.987958v1

If it passesthe review stage it will probably be published in the scientific Journal Nature.

Note: this is not a vaccine. Its a treatment option for people who are already sick.

mcintyre1994• 6 years ago

Do you know how the timetable from Nature to patients would look compared to the year+ being widely discussed for a vaccine?

janoc2• 6 years ago

It would likely go in parallel, that's why the paper is published on the preprint server. Paper reviews in major journals like Nature can easily take over a year but that is mostly to get the scientific "bragging rights" these days. It has little effect on further research and drug development since the information is out there already.

The part that is most relevant for the development of a new drug/treatment is the safety and efficiency testing in the clinical studies - and that alone will take many months. It can be shortened if it is a drug that has been used before for something else (e.g. that chloroquine for malaria) and is only repurposed because there we know the drug is safe already. For a completely new drug it could take a year or more just to do the testing and get the approvals.

So I wouldn't have high hopes to see this being deployed widely any time soon.

hprotagonist• 6 years ago

for a small compound drug, discovery to prescribable is about 10-12 years.

Biologics like this are new enough that we don’t really know the time courses but in a normal situation it’s still multiple years.

dtech• 6 years ago

Yeah, some translated important notes from the Dutch article:

This is the first known antibody that blocks the infections
The antibodies have to be tested in humans, which can take months
The research still has to be peer reviewed
It stops the virus from further internal infections, allowing the patient to recover
They are trying to get a pharmaceutical company to mass-produce it
A vaccine would be a real solution, others are working on it. Vaccine development can take 2 years

m00dy• 6 years ago

Antibodies are special type of proteins that can connect to viruses. It basically marks the virus so that immune system can shoot it down. Please let me know if this is not correct.

maxerickson• 6 years ago

They do more than that. Some antibodies block off the part of the virus that is needed to infect a cell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibody#Function

agumonkey2• 6 years ago

I wonder if they wouldn't worsen the immune storm

danaris2• 6 years ago

This isn't Spanish Flu—there's no cytokine storm with COVID-19.

That's why the deaths are almost entirely the very old and immunocompromised.

archi422• 6 years ago

For those who speak no dutch (neither do I), from what I understand the title gives the most important point. The google translation also seems pretty good:

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...

stingraycharles• 6 years ago

Am Dutch, can confirm the article is reasonably summed up with the title. From the article:

Some scientists still had these antibodies from previous research, and so far it looks promising. It has not been tried on humans yet, which can take months.

There’s a reasonable chance this might eventually become the medicine.

onetimemanytime• 6 years ago

suppose X is dying and everyone in his family circle consents, why not try it? Being an emergency and all. Nothing to lose

mmcnl• 6 years ago

Side note: this translation by Google Translate is amazing. I am a native Dutch speaker and the translation is 100% correct. I had no idea Google Translate was this good.

rumanator5• 6 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if high-volume translations weren't hand-tweaked by a human to iron out mistranslations. In fact, I would be very surprised if Google didn't had a human in the loop to handle these usecases. They already rely on end-users to fix translation issues on their own.

jiofih• 6 years ago

The structure of English and Dutch sentences is often very similar. There is a glaring error right in the title though: “ Scientists Rotterdam and Utrecht claim discovery...”

flipchart• 6 years ago

Being an English speaker living in The Netherlands, I rely heavily on Google Translate. Works near perfect for formal/semi-formal writing. Short form sentences & phrases (as you might find in casual emails), not so much.

smhg• 6 years ago

I recently had a similar experience when I came across DeepL [1].

I believe it was French to Dutch. The result was basically perfect.

[1] https://www.deepl.com/translator

kokey• 6 years ago

Monoclonal antibodies are difficult to produce at scale, that's why existing therapies with these are so expensive.

dnhz3• 6 years ago

Or because biotech companies charge what insurance companies will bear for them?

rumanator5• 6 years ago

Or because biotech companies charge what insurance companies will bear for them?

Do you actually have any evidence that substantiates your claim? Wild speculations and conspiracy theories should not have a place in discussions regarding serious matters.

dogma1138• 6 years ago

Monolocal antibodies require a complex and expensive process of cell cloning there are only a handful of labs capable of producing these and non of these can scale up production to anything close that is needed for a large scale epidemic not to mention a world wide pandemic.

This is still cutting edge biotech used for experimental treatment for cancer and other diseases often getting an orphan drug or other exemption certification to go on the market.

You also will be hard pressed to find insurance companies to cover these atm.

baryphonic• 6 years ago

The price would rise to $0 then?

nobrains2• 6 years ago

A vaccine dose proactively creates memory cells (memory B cells) in the body, which allow the body to IMMEDIATELY create fighter cells (plasma cells) when the body is infected with the actual virus, thus stopping it in its tracks. Without vaccine, when virus infects, the body takes times to learn the virus and create the memory cells and fighter cells, and hence the infection gets worse.

The weapons the fighter cells use are antibodies. In this case, the discovery has directly produced antibodies, which are helpful in fighting the virus (but cannot be used to proactively create memory cells). Antibodies have the advantage that they don't trigger the body's immune system, which means less issues to deal with.

Hope this (and other efforts being done) pass testing and get in the field as soon as possible.

shawnz• 6 years ago

Does this mean someone treated with antibodies won't be immune to the virus in future?

sudhirj• 6 years ago

Sounds like it. This is not a vaccination. It may be possible that while these antibodies are working the body might also “learn” the virus, thus providing immunity, but that would be a side effect of the infection.

rleigh• 6 years ago

It's likely. The body will be less likely to have undergone the immune response to generate antibodies of its own. Additionally, as the immune response develops, the antibody affinity to its target is refined through a process called "affinity maturation", so any antibodies which are produced might not have high affinity and hence result in a weaker immune response.

Treatment with antibodies might be useful as an immediate fix, but vaccination or infection and the development of a proper immune response is the long term requirement for resistance.

nobrains2• 6 years ago

That is correct. Immunity is developed when immune response happens and creates memory cells. In this case, that part is skipped.

boshomi• 6 years ago

bioRxive link:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.11.987958v1....

ignoramous• 6 years ago

r/covid19 link: https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/fietp4/dutch_erasm...

A commentor posted English translation:

'Erasmus MC and Utrecht University find antibody against corona'

A group of ten scientists from the Erasmus Medical Center and Utrecht University say they have found an antibody against the coronavirus, reports Erasmus Magazine.

"To our knowledge, this is the very first antibody that we know blocks the infection and there is a good chance that it will also become a drug on the market," said Professor of Cell Biology Frank Grosveld. It has yet to be tested on humans, which takes months.

The publication about the find is at the discretion of colleagues, after which it may be published in the leading trade journal Nature. "Prevention is better than cure, of course," says Grosveld. "A real solution is therefore a vaccine, others are working on that. However, developing a vaccine takes two years."

blueboo• 6 years ago

Let's say we discovered a cure. For simplicity's sake, this is a hypothetical vaccine that instantly destroys the infection.

How long would it take for such a product to go from the lab to application in the general population?--what are the key variables that factor into such an estimate? Is there some expedited process in the case of a pandemic?

_ph_• 6 years ago

This depends whether it is a "cure", that is a medicine to be given to the people who are sick, or a vaccine, which is given to the general (healthy) population.

For a medicine, a lot of the red tape can be cut, as you might test it on otherwise hopeless cases. There is a limited risk associated (that one person might die) and the results in the case it works are also easy to monitor.

With vaccines, things become complicated. - vaccines are given to healthy population, and to large parts of the population. So they need to be extremely safe, or you end up killing more than the disease would have had. This is obviously not acceptable and extensive safety testing needs to be done.

- you need to find out, whether the vaccine works at all. Creating a working vaccine against a virus like corona is very tricky - we don't for example have a working vaccine against the cold. So making sure the vaccine has the intended effect takes a long time, especially, if you consider that all tests have to be done with healthy people.

So currently some antiviral medicine is being tested at sick people and some results could be out soon, but for a vaccine, mid-2021 are the most optimistic timelines I heard.

abhiminator• 6 years ago

This is encouraging, but the key would be pushing this to clinical trials ASAP.

Efforts need to be made to drastically trim the time-span it takes for a successfully trialed COVID-19 vaccine to get from laboratories to hospitals and into patient's veins.

I'm sure many countries and billion-dollar companies are at it, but making it affordable to people who need it the most is a challenge in itself.

H8crilA• 6 years ago

The title is silly.

Of course antibodies exist against the virus - otherwise the fatality rate would be 100%. You don't just survive an infection, your body creates antibodies, and they stay in your body for a very very long time. That's the whole point of vaccination.

Once this blows over I'll go get my blood tested for antibodies for the virus - will be interesting to know if I had it.

guerrilla• 6 years ago

Deducing that something exists and identifying something are two different activities. The article is about the latter.

rumanator5• 6 years ago

Of course antibodies exist against the virus - otherwise the fatality rate would be 100%.

That was the starting point of the research project.

Then, after some work, the team actually managed to identify one, and one that also neutralizes the virus.

Vinnl3• 6 years ago

Note that this is a Dutch news channel, and the article is in Dutch.

Usually, when they report on a discovery done by Dutch researchers, it is considered newsworthy because the researchers are Dutch, not because the research itself is particularly noteworthy. So in addition to the usual reservations that one should have when noteworthy discoveries make the news, there's an extra reason not to hold your breath until you see this appear in international publications as well.

dang• 6 years ago

This comment was about https://nos.nl/l/2327076, which was the submitted URL. (A moderator has since changed it.)

Fnoord3• 6 years ago

Usually, when they report on a discovery done by Dutch researchers, it is considered newsworthy because the researchers are Dutch, not because the research itself is particularly noteworthy.

"Usually"? Do you have examples?

Vinnl3• 6 years ago

Just consider how many of these articles made international news, even though the research theoretically applies internationally: https://nos.nl/zoeken/?q=%22Nederlandse+onderzoekers%22

A human monoclonal 1 antibody blocking SARS-CoV-2 infection

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