New Delhi: The Israel Institute for Biological Research claims it has an effective vaccine against Covid-19. The lab, meant for the main purpose of protecting Israel from biological weapons, has produced a monoclonal antibody that can neutralise Covid-19.
Israel Defence Minister Naftali Bennett announced the development and called it a “significant breakthrough” towards a possible treatment for Covid-19.
What are antibodies?
Generally, our immune system produces antibodies to fight against viruses. An antibody is a protein that is capable of binding with high specificity to an antigen, like a virus.
Death occurs when the immune system doesn’t produce enough antibodies on time. The virus multiplies exponentially in the human system, so if the antibodies lag behind the virus too much then the virus becomes uncontrollable. The immune system takes several days to produce them.
Most countries affected by Covid-19, including India, are trying plasma therapy to provide antibodies from recovered patients to infected ones. But there are a lot of antibodies in plasma. Not all of them neutralise the virus.
Monoclonal antibodies come from a single cell. The antibodies that neutralise the virus are selected and cloned.
These are like guided missiles which would hit the virus. But it is difficult to mass-produce them. They are used to treat cancer, but they are very expensive. Scientists are trying to inject mice with spike proteins of Covid-19, which may produce antibodies.
Regeneron Pharma is also trying to treat Covid-19 with monoclonal antibodies. It has produced a three-monoclonal antibody cocktail for Ebola, which may get US Food and Drug Administration approval in six months.
Antibody tests are critical in reopening the world. These tests show if a person is infected by Covid-19, and if they recovered from it. These tests are showing false positives and false negatives and high variation in their results.
Also read: Scientists find unique micro blood clots in lungs causing death in severe Covid-19 patients
18-min Covid-19 test cleared
Swiss multinational healthcare company F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG has FDA’s emergency approval for producing antibody tests. Roche’s antibody test will give results in 18 minutes. Roche is 124 years old, so it has credibility. Roche claims it will produce 100 million test kits every month by the end of this year.
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