A Chinese Laboratory has announced the development of a drug which has the potential to bring COVID-19 pandemic to a halt.
Director of the university’s Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Genomics, Sunney Xie, told AFP that the drug has been successful at the animal testing stage.
“When we injected neutralising antibodies into infected mice, after five days, the viral load was reduced by a factor of 2,500,” said Xie.
“That means this potential drug has (a) therapeutic effect.”
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Researchers stated that the drug will not only shorten recovery time for infected persons but will also offer short-term immunity from the virus
A publication released in the scientific journal on Sunday by the research team claimed that using antibodies provides a potential cure for the diseases and shortens recovery time.
The drug make use of neutralizing antibodies in which the human immune system produced to prevent the virus from infecting cells that Xie’s team isolated from the blood of 60 recovered patients.
Xie stated that his team had been working “day and night” searching for the antibody.
He said:
“Our expertise is single-cell genomics rather than immunology or virology. When we realised that the single-cell genomic approach can effectively find the neutralising antibody we were thrilled.”
Moreover, Xie informed that he hopes the drug will be ready for use later this year and in time for any potential winter outbreak of the virus which has infected 4.8 million and killing more than 315,000 people across the globe within a year.
Xie said:
“Planning for the clinical trial is underway,” said Xie, adding it will be carried out in Australia and other countries since cases have dwindled in China, offering fewer human guinea pigs for testing.
“The hope is these neutralising antibodies can become a specialised drug that would stop the pandemic,”
