Drug that can stop coronavirus without vaccine to be ready for use later this year!

May 19: Scientists at a Chinese laboratory are developing a drug which has the power to bring the coronavirus pandemic to a halt “without a vaccine.” This was disclosed by Sunny Xie, Director of the Beijing Advanced Innovation Centre for Genomics in China. The Director further pointed out that the drug should be ready for use later this year.

Researchers have used a single-cell analysis method to identify multiple antibodies from COVID-19 patients that could neutralise the novel coronavirus, an advance which may lead to better therapeutics against the deadly decease. In the current study, published in the Journal Cell, the scientists used a method called high-throughput single-cell genome sequencing to identify the antibodies from convalescent plasma, a component of patient’s blood.

They added that the clinical trials using the antibodies are currently underway. From their experiment, the researchers found that some of the antibodies identified by the scientists could indeed neutralise the virus.