{"id":108536,"date":"2020-06-11T07:22:33","date_gmt":"2020-06-11T14:22:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/regeneron-sees-a-lot-of-reason-for-hope-as-human-testing-of-its-coronavirus-drug-begins"},"modified":"2020-06-11T07:22:33","modified_gmt":"2020-06-11T14:22:33","slug":"regeneron-sees-a-lot-of-reason-for-hope-as-human-testing-of-its-coronavirus-drug-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/regeneron-sees-a-lot-of-reason-for-hope-as-human-testing-of-its-coronavirus-drug-begins","title":{"rendered":"Regeneron sees \u2018a lot of reason for hope\u2019 as human testing of its coronavirus drug begins"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Regeneron Pharmaceuticals announced Thursday that it\u2019s started the first clinical trial of its experimental coronavirus antibody drug.<\/p>\n

The antibody cocktail is being tested in four human populations. Two groups of people will receive the drug to test its effectiveness as a treatment for Covid-19; the other two will receive it as a possible prevention.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll be hopefully to quickly test the safety and then start understanding the efficacy for four major different settings of this virus challenge,\u201d Regeneron\u2019s chief scientific officer, Dr. George Yancopoulos, said on CNBC\u2019s \u201cSquawk Box.\u201d Yancopoulos said he thinks that, \u201cif all goes well,\u201d the company could have \u201cdefinitive data\u201d within a few months on the effectiveness of the antibody cocktail.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there\u2019s a lot of reason for hope,\u201d Yancopoulos said, noting the company\u2019s work on Ebola. But he also stressed the unpredictable nature of science and biology, saying \u201cthere\u2019s always reasons to be concerned and to be cautious.\u201d \u201cSo we\u2019re going to be moving forward very carefully, hand-in-hand in with the FDA, and we hope sooner rather than later we can get answers that can really make a difference,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Regeneron is the latest company to begin trials for a potential Covid-19 therapy. Eli Lilly, which began trials of its antibody drug earlier this month, said a treatment could be authorized, if all goes well, for use as early as September. In scientific trials so far, Gilead Sciences\u2019s antiviral remdesivir is the only drug to show some effectiveness in treating the disease. There are more than 7.4 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the world, including over 2 million in the U.S., according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University. More than 417,100 people have died worldwide, with over a quarter of the fatalities in the U.S. Regeneron\u2019s drug is being tested on four distinct types of patients, including \u201cthe sickest patients\u201d who are hospitalized and on a ventilator or oxygen support, Yancopoulos said. It\u2019s also being tested to see whether it can prevent high-risk people from contracting the disease, such as health-care workers. The drug, known as REGN-COV2, is a combination of two antibodies. Yancopoulos said Regeneron firmly believes this is the correct approach to treat Covid-19 when using antibodies.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust like with conventional, old fashion antiviral drugs, giving one can have enormous benefit initially but it can lead to the selection and the arise of escaped viral mutants, which can could be very dangerous and risky,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat we showed is that in order to prevent this, you have to give these antibodies in cocktails.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Continue reading \u201cRegeneron sees \u2018a lot of reason for hope\u2019 as human testing of its coronavirus drug begins\u201d | ><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals announced Thursday that it\u2019s started the first clinical trial of its experimental coronavirus antibody drug. The antibody cocktail is being tested in four human populations. Two groups of people will receive the drug to test its effectiveness as a treatment for Covid-19; the other two will receive it as a possible prevention. \u201cWe\u2019ll [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1495],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108536\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}