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Two Covid-19 antibody therapies are no longer recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO), as Omicron and the variant's latest offshoots have likely rendered them obsolete. The two therapies - which are designed to work by binding to the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 to neutralise the virus' ability to infect cells - were some of the first medicines developed early in the pandemic. The virus has since evolved, and mounting evidence from lab tests suggests the two therapies - sotrovimab, as well as casirivimab-imdevimab - have limited clinical activity against the latest iterations of the virus.

President Joe Biden’s administration has ordered 14 additional states to stop using a COVID-19 treatment made by GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said March 30 it has paused shipments of the drug, sotrovimab, to the states, bringing the total number of states that are no longer receiving doses to 22. The states are Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin in the midwest; Arizona, California, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington state in the west; and Alaska and Hawaii. Previously, eight states in the northeast U.S. stopped receiving shipments of sotrovimab. The U.S. government purchased...

The WHO has strongly recommended that doctors use an arthritis drug called baricitinib to treat people with severe or critical COVID-19. The drug belongs to a class of medications known as Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitors, which block the activity of immune signaling molecules called cytokines. In severe and critical COVID-19, an excess of cytokines in the body, or “cytokine stormTrusted Source,” sends the immune system into overdrive, with potentially fatal consequences. After reviewing the latest results from clinical trials, a panel of experts at the WHO concluded that there is good evidence that baricitinib improves survival, reduces the need for...

People over age 65 at the highest risk for severe COVID-19 have often been the least likely to receive monoclonal antibodies (mAbs)—a highly effective treatment for the disease—both across and within U.S. "Monoclonal antibodies should first go to patients at the highest risk of death from COVID-19, but the opposite happened—the healthiest patients were the most likely to get treatment. Monoclonal antibodies are very effective at treating mild to moderate COVID-19 infection among non-hospitalized patients. But during the pandemic, mAbs have been in short supply. Federal guidelines prioritize patients at higher risk of being hospitalized or dying from COVID-19, including...

Federal supply of the one monoclonal antibody treatment that has proven effective is now "limited," with more doses expected in January, a Health and Human Services spokesperson said. Major hospitals in the New York region say they have stopped using monoclonal antibody therapies because they have run out of the one treatment that appears to be effective against the omicron variant of the coronavirus, leaving doctors without a vital tool to treat severely ill Covid-19 patients. New York University and Valley Health System in northern New Jersey notified doctors Sunday... Meanwhile, Mount Sinai Health System in New York said it...

Of the eight approved or authorized antibodies, all but sotrovimab completely or almost completely lost their neutralizing activity against the Omicron pseudovirus. A cocktail of cilgavimab and tixagevimab had a reduced potency of 200-fold. Sotrovimab, conversely, shows a drop of 3-fold drop in neutralization potency.

Beloved young relative has covid. There is no Regeneron in the state. Offered Sotromab. Feedback? Never heard of it.

TALLAHASSEE (CBSMiami/NSF) — Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Thursday that the state has begun purchasing doses of a monoclonal antibody treatment directly from the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, after the federal government last week took control of distribution of the COVID-19 treatments produced by other companies. DeSantis said the first purchase was for 3,000 doses of the drug sotrovimab, which was given emergency-use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in May. The governor said last week that he would pursue a direct-purchasing agreement with GlaxoSmithKline, as the state is unable to directly buy doses of Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody treatment. Monoclonal...

Following the Biden administration’s surprise announcement that Health and Human Services (HHS) is taking over the distribution of monoclonal antibody infusion treatments for COVID-19—reducing the number of doses in several red states by 50 percent—a spokesperson for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he has reached out to GlaxoSmithKline to “fill the deficit.” Some states are set to receive fewer doses of monoclonal antibody treatments after the Biden administration switched the distribution system this week. Florida, Alabama, Texas, Tennessee are among the states targeted to have their monoclonal antibody (mAb) doses restricted by HHS. “HHS will determine the amount of product...

It neutralized the coronavirus behind the first SARS outbreak, too. newly discovered antibody was able to neutralize not only all strains of COVID-19, but other coronaviruses known to cause respiratory infections in humans — a potential silver bullet for a whole class of deadly, flu-like viruses. Mutant viruses: As viruses spread, they undergo tiny genetic mutations, and when we find a unique version of the virus, we call it a new strain. Occasionally, new strains appear that can spread more easily, evade the immune system, or cause more severe disease. Several worrisome strains of COVID-19 have already appeared during the...

ideal therapeutic anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody would resist viral escape1,2,3, have activity against diverse sarbecoviruses4,5,6,7, and be highly protective through viral neutralization8,9,10,11 and effector functions12,13. Understanding how these properties relate to each other and vary across epitopes would aid the development of therapeutic antibodies and guide vaccine design. Here we comprehensively characterize escape, breadth and potency across a panel of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies targeting the receptor-binding domain (RBD). Despite a trade-off between in vitro neutralization potency and breadth of sarbecovirus binding, we identify neutralizing antibodies with exceptional sarbecovirus breadth and a corresponding resistance to SARS-CoV-2 escape. One of these antibodies, S2H97, binds with...

An antibody therapy that appears to neutralize all known SARS-CoV-2 strains, and other coronaviruses, was developed with a little help from structural biologist Jay Nix News Center Scientist at Berkeley Lab Played a Hand in “Inescapable” COVID-19 Antibody Discovery An antibody therapy that appears to neutralize all known SARS-CoV-2 strains, and other coronaviruses, was developed with a little help from structural biologist Jay Nix Lifesaving COVID-19 vaccines are allowing us to feel optimistic again, after more than a year of anxiety and tragedy. But vaccines are only one side of the coin – we also need treatments that can prevent...

Sotrovimab, the newest antibody therapy, was developed by GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology after a large collaborative study by scientists from across the nation discovered a natural antibody (in the blood of a SARS survivor, back in 2003) that has remarkable breadth and efficacy. Experiments showed that this antibody, called S309, neutralizes all known SARS-CoV-2 strains – including newly emerged mutants that can now “escape” from previous antibody therapies – as well as the closely related original SARS-CoV virus. Jay Nix, leader of the Molecular Biology Consortium based at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source (ALS), used beamlines at the ALS and...