An antibody treatment produced by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals called REGN-COV2 is starting final-phase clinical tests which, if proven successful, could set the stage for the drug to be administered on COVID-19 patients and prevent transmissions among persons who've been exposed to others with the virus.
REGN-COV2 is a mixture of two antibodies that block the coronavirus' spiked protein, which it uses to attack human cells. Regeneron is proceeding to Phase 3 of its clinical trial to find out if the vaccine can keep infections at bay among those who have been recently exposed to the virus, for instance, through a person in their household.
The tests, conducted in 100 locations and in tandem with the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is expected to enroll 2,000 subjects across the US. Regeneron also partners with drug producer Eli Lilly and pharma group AbCellera, which have also begun testing their antibody vaccines in humans on June 1.
Regeneron's vaccine has also moved into Phase 2/3 phase of two trials that involved 1,850 hospitalized and 1,050 non-hospitalized patients suffering from the disease across 150 sites in the US, Chile, Brazil, and Mexico, testing its capacity to treat sick people.
In a media statement, Dr. George Yancopoulos, co-founder, president and chief scientific officer of Regeneron, said the company is running simultaneous adaptive clinical tests so they can move as fast as possible to provide a potential medication to prevent and treat COVID-19 infections even amid an ongoing global health crisis.
Yancopoulos said they are very happy to work with NIAID to "study REGN-COV2 in our quest to prevent the spread of the virus with an anti-viral cocktail that could be available sooner than a vaccine," Mark Terry of BioSpace quoted him as saying. News of the collaboration helped Regeneron's shares in the stock market rise 3.7 percent at $645 before the bell.
Regeneron is one of the few front-running biotech groups that have undertaken human trials to determine their experimental therapies to contain the virus, including Gilead Sciences and AbbVie. The vaccine developer was also testing its rheumatoid arthritis vaccine, Kevzara, with Sanofi to treat COVID-19, which on Thursday failed to attain the primary objective of a US research testing it in severely sick COVID-19 patients.
Regeneron studied thousands of antibodies taken from genetically modified mice as well as from humans, identifying the two they determined to be the most potent against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, while not competing against each other. In 2019, a triple antibody combination developed by the biotech firm was shown to be effective against the Ebola virus.
