Antibody therapies could be a bridge to a coronavirus vaccine — but will the world benefit?

Antibody therapies could be a bridge to a coronavirus vaccine — but will the world benefit?

Antibody therapies offer bridge to a vaccine

Monoclonal antibodies could be used to treat people with COVID-19 until a vaccine is available, or people who can’t get vaccinated once there is one. In this approach, researchers isolate antibodies from recovering patients and identify those that best ‘neutralize’ the virus by binding to it and keeping it from replicating. They then produce these antibodies in bulk in the laboratory. (This differs from ‘convalescent plasma’ taken directly from the blood of people recovering from COVID-19 and used to treat other patients.) Dozens of monoclonal-antibody drugs for COVID-19 are in development, but they tend to be expensive to make, and it’s unclear how many people would benefit from them.
Nature | 5 min read