Thread by @michaelmina_lab

Eli Lilly’s antibody therapy unfortunately is not working in hospitalized patients. A blow to a hopeful “remedy” that could help tip the balance between risk of infections vs risk of economic fallout

But this isn’t the last of this story.. not by far

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nytimes.com/live/2020/10/2…

First, there are other antibody based therapies that are being developed, are in trials and new versions in early R&D phase.

Monoclonal antibodies have a huge potential and we mustn’t let this get us down.

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Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody therapy for example (the drug given to the president) remains in trials for hospitalized patients. This is but one of many that will be in trials!

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But also, one of the remarkable aspects of antibody based therapies is that they don’t need to only be therapies given to hospitalized patients... and don’t need to be “just therapies” at all...

Antibodies are evolved to persist in us for quite some time...

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Like natural antibodies, these too can have long lifespan’s in the body and we can envision that monoclonals could be used as prophylactic therapies.
So while Lilly’s antibody may not benefit hospitalized patients, it could serve to prevent new infections, as one example.

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In this case, an antibody based drug could be thought of almost like a temporary vaccine - giving the body what a vaccine would otherwise attempt to elicit. A prophylactic treatment.

These types of uses, are being thought up and developed as I write this.

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In the nearer term, Eli Lilly isn’t done with their drug. Without moving towards prophylactic, their drug may still benefit those with mild or early infections. These trials too are happening. We have to wait and see.

In meantime, I’ll remain hopeful for these. They make sense.