Vaccines are not the only horizon in the fight against Covid-19. Research into treatments continues, of which monoclonal antibodies are among the most advanced. At the end of January, Germany announced an order for 200,000 doses of this type of therapy offered by two American pharmaceutical groups, Regeneron and Eli Lilly, for an amount of 400 million euros, or 2,000 euros per dose.
In fact, monoclonal antibody treatments, currently used to treat chronic autoinflammatory diseases or certain cancers, are extremely expensive because of their delicate mode of production. These molecules are artificially multiplied in vitro, from natural antibodies, by bacteria or cells selected for their ability to produce a particular antibody – hence their name.
The principle is to provide the body with large doses of these molecules which mimic the function of the antibodies that our body could naturally produce to defend itself against the presence of a virus. Regarding Covid-19, the treatments developed by the companies Regeneron and Eli Lilly were the only ones which reached phase III and which had shown efficacy in reducing the viral load, at an early stage, in a person infected with SARS- CoV-2.
On Thursday, February 11, officials of the UK Recovery trial announced that a repositioned monoclonal antibody, commonly used against rheumatoid arthritis, tocilizumab, was reducing mortality in patients hospitalized for Covid-19. The observed effect corresponded to saving an additional patient compared to standard care each time we treated twenty-five patients with this molecule.
In France, in the spring, the announcement of similar results was deemed premature, an insufficient number of patients having at this stage been enrolled in the Corimuno trial. The completed data, published in October 2020, had confirmed a limitation of the worsening and transfer to intensive care. Data from Recovery, which has not yet been published in a scientific journal, suggests that tocilizumab could be used in combination with a corticosteroid, dexamethasone, with the effect of reducing the mortality of patients requiring treatment by a third. oxygen, and nearly half for those placed on mechanical breathing assistance.
Most at-risk populations
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