Do you want to borrow some antibodies?
How one Covid-19 patient's antibodies became a powerful, mass-produced drug to save others.
A few very lucky people make great—really great—antibodies against the new coronavirus. This is the backstory of how scientists narrowed in on a particularly potent antibody from a recovered Covid-19 patient in Seattle. They leveraged that luck and mass-manufactured copies of that powerful antibody. The drug, which has received emergency authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, reduces the risk of hospitalization from Covid-19 by 70 percent. Moreover, it cuts the risk of vulnerable nursing home residents even getting infected with the coronavirus by up to 80 percent. Unlike vaccines, which take weeks to confer immunity, the drug gives people immediate protection against the pandemic virus.
I began reporting this feature in July, and over the last half year I have interviewed 20 sources intimately involved in the hunt for elite antibodies. Their efforts stretch back decades—all the way back to the emergence of the HIV pandemic. Just like mass-manufactured Covid antibody drugs have shown protective power, copies of an antibody from a man known as ‘Donor 45’ were reported this week to shield people from certain strains of HIV. That’s a massive step forward.
My feature story, titled May I Borrow Your Covid Immunity? is online now, and you can read it here: https://www.wired.com/story/covid-immunity-antibodies/.
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