Chinese researchers said they have been prepping up for another drug that can help curb the coronavirus pandemic, probably, without the need of vaccine. The medication being researched at China’s renowned Peking University has been tried effectively on animals and found to be promising at the animal testing stage.
Scientists assert the drug could cut down the recuperation time for patients contaminated with COVID-19. Test outcomes additionally indicated that the medication can possibly offer momentary resistance from the infection. Sunney Xie, director of the university’s Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Genomics, claimed that the drug has proven to mitigate the Ill effects of Covid-19 at the animal testing stage itself.
When we injected neutralising antibodies into infected mice, after five days the viral load was reduced by a factor of 2,500,” said Xie, which is conspicious that this potential drug is found to have a therapeutic effect.
The drug functions by using neutralising antibodies produced by human immune system – to prevent the virus from infecting cells – which Xie’s team isolated from the blood of 60 patients who had recovered from COVID-19.
“The hope is these neutralised antibodies can become a specialised drug that would stop the pandemic,” Xie stated.
Xie shared that their research goes by single-cell genomics approach rather than immunology or virology. They were elated as it was showing promising results in effectively mapping the neutralising antibody. The director also said their team are planning to carry out the clinical trials in Australia and other countries since cases have shown marked inconsistencies in guinea pigs in China. The team asserted that the potential drug to test covid-19 would be possibly available by the end of the year.