The world is waiting for a vaccine that will put an end to the aggressive hold of coronavirus across countries.
Lives have come to a halt, the normal has changed and how! There are many contenders for the coronavirus vaccine racing to reach the market first but if scientists at a renowned China University are to be believed, we don’t need a vaccine to stop the pandemic.
According to Peking University researchers, a drug is being tested to not only cut down the recovery time but also enable short term immunity from the virus to the infected. The drug has shown promising results during animal testing and now will be tested further for efficacy.
For those who don’t already know, five potential coronavirus vaccines are in work in China and have already reached the human trial phase.
Sunney Xie, director of the Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Genomics, told AFP that the drug has been successful at the animal testing stage. “When we injected neutralising antibodies into infected mice, after five days the viral load was reduced by a factor of 2,500,” said Xie. “That means this potential drug has (a) therapeutic effect.”
How does it work
Once taken, the drug makes use of neutralising antibodies, that are produced by the body’s immune system to restrict the virus infecting cells. The team managed to isolate these from the blood of 60 recovered patients, AFP stated.
The team’s expertise lies in single-cell genomics and they realised that the approach helped them find the neutralising antibody.
When can we expect it
The drug is expected to hit the market later this year and will help combat the potential winter outbreak of the virus which is gripping the entire world.