Florence, 20 July 2021 – TheItalian monoclonal antibody it neutralizes all variants of the SarS-CoV2 virus and is administered simply by injection, even at the patient’s home, rather than intravenously in the hospital unlike those produced in the USA. But this second generation antibody, having passed the first clinical phase with excellent results, look hard at the end of the two successive phases of experimentation: in fact there is a lack of candidate-patients and funding. To speak directly of the difficulties encountered is the ‘father’ of the Made in Italy monoclonal, Rino Rappuoli, scientific director and research and development manager of GlaxoSmithKline, at the Researcher’s Day at the Maugeri in Pavia.
The timing of phase 2 and 3 are currently not predictable, explained the scientist – “the program foresees that the test will be carried out on 800 people who have had positive swabs: we started in mid-May and so far we have only recruited about a hundred. difficult to contact any candidates for privacy reasons “.
To address the problem the Tuscany region is spreading the monoclonal opportunity via the internet. “We hope that this information campaign will produce effective results, otherwise we will have to continue the work abroad. In Italy – underlined Rappuoli – we can do good research, but today there is still a lack of funding to have internationally competitive laboratories. We hope that with the funds of the NRP are made the necessary investments “.
An argument, that of research funds, which returns as a mantra in the Italian scientific world that defines the dispersion of skills and objectives caused by the lack of planning and the scarce funding of the last decades as unacceptable. Even more so now that the damage of a pandemic is there for all to see. To wish for more resources in Italy too Walter Ricciardi, scientific director of Ics Maugeri and consultant of the Ministry of Health who spoke at the Researcher’s Day, who underlined: “Today in Italy 1.4 percent of GDP is invested, we are not among the top 30 countries, we should go up to at least 2-2.5 “Rappuoli, for his part, focused on one of the reasons for the great speed with which anti-Covid vaccines were produced:” The United States government has made 12 billion available for the most important, including the one I work for. The result was achieved in less than a year “.
Returning to monoclonal antibodies, the Italian Medicines Agency (Aifa) on 12 July announced that since mid-March, 6,198 Covid patients have been prescribed monoclonal antibodies experimentally authorized in Italy. Of these, 74 are those who received them in the last week: a number growing for the first time after months of decline and which goes hand in hand with the increase recorded in infections.
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