Synthetic antibodies might offer a quick coronavirus treatment
In the search for a treatment for COVID-19, researchers are exploring a wide range of approaches. Dr. Jacob Glanville, one of the researchers featured in the Netflix documentary “Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak,” says he is working on a possible treatment with bioengineered antibodies used to treat SARS.
Video Transcript
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JACOB GLANVILLE: For the last nine weeks, we have been working on creating an antibody therapeutic to neutralize-- and therefore cure-- the novel coronavirus. Antibodies are proteins that your own body produces-- your immune system-- to block viruses and protect you. We are engineering very specific antibodies that are really good at this, to be able to go block the virus.
I went back almost 18 years to find antibodies that had been developed against the SARS virus. So the SARS virus is a cousin of the novel coronavirus. So what I did in my laboratory, and my team members, is they developed the starting five antibodies. We engineered hundreds of millions of versions of them by manipulating their DNA to then search for-- in all those hundreds of millions of versions, could we find ones that had been able to evolve to catch up to the novel coronavirus?
And we are pleased to announce that we were able to do that for all of the five antibodies we started with. We've got amazing cross-neutralizing antibodies that hit the novel coronavirus.
- People who are watching television today heard from a researcher named Dr. Jacob Granville who's come up with a potential antibody therapy. I'm wanting to know if you know anything about this?
ANTHONY FAUCI: You know, John, I don't know specifically this individual what they're doing, but I can tell you there's a lot of activity that is centered around a passive transfer of antibodies. And this is an old concept. In fact, immunology was born decades and decades and decades ago with the concept of giving passive transfer-- a serum-- to an individual to protect them from the infection. So I wouldn't be surprised if he and a number of other people are pursuing this. It's the right thing to do.
JONATHAN MORENO: So this is a bridge to protecting some people who are ill, to protecting people on the front lines, to protecting law enforcement and firefighters, to protecting our military. This is a bridge to a vaccine. It's not a vaccine.
JACOB GLANVILLE: So a vaccine and an antibody therapeutic both use antibodies to protect you. Both of them-- you get a shot. Otherwise, they're pretty different. A vaccine, what you're doing, when you get a shot, that syringe has little pieces of the virus in it. And so you get injected with it and your arm gets a little swollen. What's going on is your immune system is starting to learn how to attack those pieces of the virus. And that takes time. It might be six or seven weeks before you have protection.
With an antibody therapeutic, that syringe-- or an IV bag-- contains the antibodies directly. So when they infuse into you, your body doesn't need to do anything. In my mind, this is better than a vaccine for medical professionals because they don't have seven to eight weeks to be-- because they're in a very dangerous position. For that group of people, an antibody probably makes more sense, because they're immediately protected.
JONATHAN MORENO: It's not a cure-all, but it would give us some wiggle room. And that is really important. It does have to be safety tested.
JACOB GLANVILLE: There's still work to be done-- a lot of work. So we have these molecules. We still need to go through a series of tests on them for safety. We need to do a test on a neutralization on a local. We're trying to send it to government, and I'd like them to test it remotely from us, because I want them to look at it independently of me and be like, oh yeah, these are amazing.
ANTHONY FAUCI: But the ultimate game changer in this will be a vaccine, the same way a vaccine for other diseases that were scourges in the past, that now we don't even worry about. I mean, the vaccine is-- as I said-- it's on target for the year to a year and a half.
JACOB GLANVILLE: Part of our mission is to make affordable medicine and make sure the whole world can gain access to it. Considering the urgency of the outbreak, our intention to release the drug under what's called compassionate use, which is that as soon as we have evidence that it's safe and it's effective, we can start releasing it globally.
JONATHAN MORENO: We should be reasonably optimistic, and we should be very happy that I think the right buttons are being pushed with respect to this potential therapy.
