A new monoclonal antibody may work against many variants of Covid-19, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:06 — 1.5MB)

Subscribe: RSS

The Covid-19 spike protein allows it to attach to cells and infect them, and it’s been a primary target for vaccines and antibodies. Now a new monoclonal antibody directed against a region of this protein that really doesn’t change very much has been developed, and Brian Garibaldi, a critical care medicine expert at Johns Hopkins, says that’s great, but there are still barriers to treatment.

Garibaldi: While its easier to administer something subq or intramuscular, you still have to watch people for potential infusion or injection site reactions and the biggest challenge right now is space and staff.  We’ve seen critical shortages at all levels of healthcare. Remember these are all for the most part patients who are going to have Covid. So you have to have a designated space in an already busy healthcare environment to administer that drug. I think that’s led to a lot of health systems not being able to keep up with the demand.  :28

Garibaldi says this antibody should be useful against more variants of Covid-19. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.