Posted on 04/01/2020 7:31:44 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
BEIJING (Reuters) - A team of Chinese scientists has isolated several antibodies that it says are "extremely effective" at blocking the ability of the new coronavirus to enter cells, which eventually could be helpful in treating or preventing COVID-19.
There is currently no proven effective treatment for the disease, which originated in China and is spreading across the world in a pandemic that has infected more than 850,000 and killed 42,000.
Zhang Linqi at Tsinghua University in Beijing said a drug made with antibodies like the ones his team have found could be used more effectively than the current approaches, including what he called "borderline" treatment such as plasma.
Plasma contains antibodies but is restricted by blood type.
In early January, Zhang's team and a group at the 3rd People's Hospital in Shenzhen began analysing antibodies from blood taken from recovered COVID-19 patients, isolating 206 monoclonal antibodies which showed what he described as a "strong" ability to bind with the virus' proteins.
They then conducted another test to see if they could actually prevent the virus from entering cells, he told Reuters in an interview.
Among the first 20 or so antibodies tested, four were able to block viral entry and of those, two were "exceedingly good" at doing so, Zhang said.
The team is now focused on identifying the most powerful antibodies and possibly combining them to mitigate the risk of the new coronavirus mutating.
If all goes well, interested developers could mass produce them for testing, first on animals and eventually on humans.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Just NO!
Zhang Schmang. I don’t believe anything out of there at this point.
Like I trust those unhygienic turds.
I do not trust any information coming from China.
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
look, ccp is a rapist who is trying to provide rape test kit afterwards
The antibodies come from human blood plasma.
A good bet is some folks currently have some, or more, of these antibodies already, and that accounts for the disparity in how people have responded differently to a Covid-19 infection - from no illness, to mild symptoms, to severe reactions, to critical conditions.
FU China...
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