The biotech company DistributedBio claims to have developed an antibody therapy against COVID-19 . The drug will be tested for effectiveness at the us Military medical research Institute of infectious diseases.
Dr. Jacob Glanville, a self-proclaimed “entrepreneur, inventor, and computational immunoengineer” mentioned in the Netflix documentary series “Pandemic: how to prevent an outbreak,” claims that he has developed a viable drug for COVID-19 that will soon be tested by the US military.
This scientist has developed a cure for COVID-19?
Glanville, a founding partner and CEO of the biotech company Distributed Bio, and a group of employees began developing the treatment on January 25, 2020. According to the company’s website:
“Our strategy was to create a panel of anti-SARS antibodies so that they would recognize and block the new coronavirus . The result of this work is a panel of therapeutic antibodies with ultra-high affinity to neutralize SARS-Cov-2 (the virus behind COVID -19).
Both human antibody detection technology DistributedBioSuperHuman 2.0 and computational antibody optimization technology Tumbler were used in the work, which helped to detect thousands of antibodies against the new virus in 9 weeks.”
How does Treatment with Antibodies
In an interview on March 31, 2020, Glanville explained how his company came up with the treatment:
“… My team has successfully taken five antibodies that back in 2002 we were determined to bind and neutralize in order to block and stop the SARS virus… The new virus is a cousin of the old SARS.
So we created hundreds of millions of versions of these antibodies, we mutated them a little bit, and in this pool of mutated versions, we found versions that cross them … They bind to the same locations as the new virus, Covid-19.
They bind [to] a place that the virus uses to get into your cells. Thus blocking it. At this point, we know that it connects the same place very closely with a high affinity. The next step is we send the antibodies to the military, and they put them directly into the virus and show that they block its ability to infect cells.”
As FoxNews reports, antibody therapy essentially bypasses the need for a vaccine. “Instead of giving you a vaccine and waiting for it to produce an immune response, we will just give you these antibodies right away … so within about 20 minutes, the patient will be able to neutralize the virus, ” Glanville said.
According to Glanville, the finished drug will be tested for effectiveness at the US Military medical research institute of infectious diseases (USAMRIID), and the CharlesRiver laboratories will conduct safety tests.
According to NewYork Post, clinical trials may begin in late summer. At best, it could be released in September for use of an unregistered drug due to exceptional circumstances, Glanville says, which means patients can get it outside of a clinical trial. When asked about Glanville’s claims, Dr. Anthony fosie replied that using monoclonal antibodies is an “old concept” and that following it was “the right decision”.
In an interview with Ella Soghomonyan of KRONON, Glanville also discusses other drugs that look promising against COVID-19. One of them is the malaria drug chloroquine, which the US food and drug Administration allows to be used off-label against COVID-19. Laboratory studies on cell cultures have shown its effectiveness against SARS-Cov-2.
Another drug that is currently used is hydroxychloroquine (Plaquenil). Although it uses the same pathway as chloroquine, it has a safer side-effect profile. One recently published study has had encouraging results using this drug. Infection control specialist Dr. Didier Raoul from France registered 24 patients with confirmed COVID-19.
Patients received 600 mg of hydroxychloroquine every day, and their viral load was monitored. Depending on the clinical picture, azithromycin was added to the treatment Protocol. Patients from another hospital who refused treatment were used as a control group.
Although the study was small, the results showed that ” treatment with hydroxychloroquine is largely associated with a decrease/disappearance of viral load in patients with COVID-19, and its effect is enhanced by azithromycin.”
Another doctor shared his positive results using a similar Protocol. Dr. Vladimir Zelenko treats a close-knit population of 35,000 people in Kyrias-Joel, new York. After testing showed that there could be 20,000 infected people in the community, he developed a pre-admission treatment Protocol for patients.
During a five-day period, he treated any patient with shortness of breath or at high risk with mild symptoms. The team used hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and zinc sulfate for five days. During this time, there were no cases of death, hospitalization or incubation. He reported that “about 10% of patients” had ” temporary nausea and diarrhea.”
Powerful malaria medications have their own risks
Please understand that I am simply reporting that this approach is being used and do not endorse it in any way, because like any medication, it can have unintended consequences called side effects, and many of them can be very serious.
While chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine show promise with respect to COVID-19, they have their own risks. Both drugs have the side effect of prolonging the QT wave of the electrocardiogram. This means that electrical activity in the heart changes, which can lead to seizures, fainting, and sudden death.
Two days after China issued guidelines on the use of chloroquine, it issued a warning about careful monitoring of side effects and restricting use for people without heart, liver or kidney disease, as well as for those who do not take antibiotics such as azithromycin or prescribed steroids.
I believe that there are more effective, less expensive, and simpler strategies that I have previously discussed that should be considered before this radical approach.
Zinc can play an important role
Interestingly, chloroquine appears to improve zinc uptake, and this may be part of what makes it so useful against COVID-19. Experience shows that zinc gluconate and zinc acetate effectively reduce the severity and duration of viral infections. Zinc is crucial for the effectiveness of the immune system, enzymes, protein synthesis, and cell division.
Studies show that using zinc tablets reduces the duration of a cold by 33% and reduces the severity of your symptoms. It has also been shown that zinc inhibits the coronavirus Invitro and blocks its replication in cell cultures. As explained in Sault MedCram:
“When a coronavirus infects your cell, it releases cellular RNA into it, which will be translated using ribosomes. These ribosomes first translate this RNA molecule into a protein called RNA-dependent RNA polymerase or replicase.
And this particular enzyme … it is inhibited by high intracellular concentrations of zinc. As it turned out, chloroquine is a zinc ionophore, as is hydroxychloroquine. The zinc ionophore is basically a protein or gate that allows zinc to enter cells.
We don’t know if this is actually how it works in this case, but it seems to suggest that the mechanism of action of zinc inhibits replicase, and that hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine increase intracellular zinc concentrations.”
The immune system is your # 1 defense
As this situation develops, I aim to provide you with viable prevention and treatment options that you can use at home. A recently published article by Mark McCarthy and Dr. James Dicolantonio of pharmacology, suggests the use of nutraceuticals that can help reduce the symptoms and severity of flu and coronaviruses. According to the authors, these viruses:
“…Cause an inflammatory storm in the lungs, and it is this storm that leads to acute respiratory failure, organ failure, and death. Some nutraceuticals can help reduce inflammation in the lungs from RNA viruses, and others can also help increase the type 1 interferon response to these viruses, which is basically what helps the body create antiviral antibodies to fight infections.”
Based on the findings of several randomized clinical trials, Dinicolantonio and McCarthy believe that the antiviral effect of certain nutraceuticals is obvious, and hope that their attention to these benefits will encourage further research to test this strategy.
Also, don’t forget to take care of the gut microbiome, reduce your sugar and carbohydrate intake, sleep well, and practice good hand washing to maintain your health .
Stay away from others when you are sick to avoid spreading any virus that you may be carrying, and seek medical attention as if you have the flu. Shortness of breath is a clear indication that help may be needed. This is especially true if you are pregnant, have a weakened immune system, or have a chronic disease that can put you in the category of higher risk for severe consequences of COVID-19.
Source: Econet
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