Chinese authorities recently authorized the compassionate use of a neutralizing antibody treatment called DXP-604 for COVID-19 patients in Beijing, China.
According to South China Morning Post, this comes after officials authorized using the new treatment specifically for 14 COVID-19 patients at Ditan Hospital in Beijing.
The treatment, administered through intravenous infusion, is based on an antibody that the director of Beijing Advanced Innovation Centre for Genomics at Peking University, Sunney Xie Xiaoliang, and his team.
The therapy's use substantially decreased the viral load of COVID-19 patients, not to mention relieving symptoms like shortness of breath and loss of taste and smell, a Science and Technology Daily official explained. It added some of the patients were already discharged.
COVID-19 Antibody Treatment
In a conference held earlier this month, Xie said his team could identify an entire range antibody that could attack all variants of COVID-19 in lab tests. This particular antibody was separated from the plasma for more than 60 patients recovering from the virus.
While other therapies seek to combine two antibodies to prevent the variants from escaping, DXP-604 can attack mutations with a single antibody, which will reduce production costs by one-third.
This report also specified that Xie, along with his team, was working on cutting the dosage as well, by half. As a result, such a decrease in dosage will help lower costs, as well.
Meanwhile, the other antibody identified as DXP-593 appeared to have less efficacy against COVID-19 strains.
Experimental Therapy
While the trial size for the treatment stays small, and no clinical data is available yet, the said report indicated that Singlomics had signed a letter of intent with Sinopharm, China National Pharmaceutical Group, to carry out phase 2 and phase 3 trials abroad, while phase 2 trials were being carried out in China.
This experimental therapy is one of the hosts of projects China is currently working on to find treatment for COVID-19, as it is too keen to guarantee a low death rate before it considers reopening its borders.
The country, which has been reported to have a zero-tolerance scheme on the disease, has pumped roughly $49.3 million into more than 50 research projects on developing COVID-19 drugs and treatments since the onset of the pandemic nearly two years ago.
Regulators are currently on track to approve China's first drug against COVID-19, possibly within a couple of weeks.
Mixing 2 Potent Antibodies
A monoclonal antibody therapy developed by the United States- and China-based pharmaceutical company Brii Biosciences, with researchers at Tsinghua University and the Third People's Hospital of Shenzhen, may obtain conditional approval by the end of this year, a separate report from the South China Morning Post specified.
Earlier on, the company said it had submitted to Chinese regulators trial data and applied for emergency use authorization in the US.
The treatment mixes two potent antibodies and has high efficacy against numerous variants, including the COVID-19 Delta variant, the present dominant global strain, which is detailed in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention site.
Antibody therapies are known for their expensive cost. Many researchers are working on small-molecule medicine as well, with the hope of guaranteeing wider access to drugs.
To date, no Chinese candidate has stood out in this case yet. In the West, antiviral drugs Merck and Pfizer developed have been found to significantly reduce hospital admissions and deaths, although there are more trials needed to identify their safety and effectiveness.
Related report about the COVID-19 drug that could treat the virus without a vaccine is shown on the South China Morning Post's YouTube video below:
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