Gilead Announces Mass Production of Remdesivir – More Drugs Under Research
In a letter written to Fox News, the company appeared to be working with chemical and pharmaceutical laboratories to make the production of remdesivir available for all parts of the world.
Gilead said in the same letter that in order to produce the drug for developing countries, the company was "negotiating long-term voluntary licenses with several generic drugmakers in India and Pakistan."
Remdesivir for Mass Production
They added that they would be working alongside the Medicine Patent Pool, which they have maintained a solid partnership for years, to license remdesivir for other countries.
CEO of Gilead Sciences and one of the authors of the study for the clinical tests of remdesivir Daniel O'Day announced in a different open letter last month that supply for the drug amounted to 1.5 million doses. This included the products in the final stages of production at the time.
He added that the team estimated this would allow 140,000 treatment courses for a 10-day duration. Gilead was looking for improvements in the drug in order to be able to treat patients for a shorter period.
"[This] means we can significantly increase the number of courses available," O'Day explained, referring to the 10-day treatment duration. "All of which Gilead has committed for donation."
Last week, the Food and Drug Administration permitted the use of remdesivir for hospitals in the United States. This emergency approval was expedited by the surge of cases of COVID-19 patients.
Two separate tests showed remdesivir would be able to alleviate some of the symptoms of the coronavirus disease. The first was conducted by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the other by SIMPLE, which proved that patients treated with remdesivir for five days could be just as effective as a 10-day treatment.
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Antibody that Neutralizes SARS-CoV-2
Six months into battling the pandemic, the world is yet to find a cure or treatment for COVID-19. However, researchers have published a study about the development of an antibody that can neutralize SARS-CoV-2 in cells.
The antibody, which they called 47D11, was engineered in a laboratory. The scientists discovered that it could inhibit the "spike" protein that is present in SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
The study also reported alternative mechanisms for the disease neutralization by RBD-targeting antibodies. This included the inactivation of the spike proteins "through antibody-induced destabilization of its prefusion structure17, which may also apply for 47D11."
According to the Mayo Clinic, 47D11 is also called the monoclonal antibody, and it was commonly used as substitute antibodies to treat people who needed cancer drugs.
In the research, the scientists determined that 47D11 would be useful for the advancement of antigen detection tests as well as serological assays that concentrated on SARS-CoV-2. It claimed that neutralizing antibodies may be able to clear the virus in infected patients or protect individuals exposed to the virus.
"The antibody offers the potential to prevent and/or treat COVID-19," they concluded.
It is still too soon to say, but the results of the research have so far proved promising. The world is going to need more drugs to be able to eliminate the coronavirus pandemic.
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