Bill Gates touts monoclonal antibodies treatment as effective cure to COVID-19

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates lauded the monoclonal antibody treatments, similar to the one US President Donald Trump received following his COVID-19 diagnoses, as the most effective approach to cure the coronavirus infections. While talking to CNN on October 8 (local time), Gates said that the experimental antibody treatments have always been the “most promising therapeutic category”. While the cure is still undergoing tests for efficacy, he said that “early data looks quite good”.

Adding that everything goes well, the cost of the intervention could be only a few hundred dollars or even $100. Trump also received the experimental Regeneron antibody therapy which was one of the two types of antibodies that was very successful with Ebola. After testing positive for COVID-19, Trump was hospitalised at Walter Reed Medical Center and returned to White House four days later after receiving the antibody cocktail by biotech company Regeneron that includes a pair of monoclonal antibodies targeting the spike protein on the virus that the pathogen uses to penetrate inside healthy cells. 

Meanwhile, Regeneron and pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Co have applied to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for emergency use authorisation for their monoclonal antibody products. And Gates said the preliminary data from the clinical trials of Eli Lilly And Co’s monoclonal antibody indicates a 60 per cent reduction in hospitalization rates. According to Microsoft co-founder, these treatments might also be far cheaper than the formulations that are currently being used to treat COVID-19. 

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Researchers are 'optimistic'

Before Bill Gates, even the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, Dr Anthony Fauci said that researchers are “really quite optimistic about” the monoclonal antibodies treatment. In a separate interview with CNN, he explained that the experts have had the experience with that kind of cure for other diseases. 

Talking about the experimental treatment and its effect on Ebola, Fauci said that it had “us be cautiously optimistic that monoclonal antibodies, which are a very specific protein, right, that the body makes that you can produce in very large amounts and infuse it into an individual by an IV infusion, has the potential to really be something very, very important in the treatment of COVID-19 patients.”

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