A Chinese laboratory has been developing a new drug it believes has the power to bring the coronavirus pandemic to a halt.

A drug being tested by scientists at China’s prestigious Peking University could not only shorten the recovery time for those infected but even offer short-term immunity from the virus, researchers say.

The drug has been successful at the animal testing stage– ‘Sunney Xie”, director of the university’s Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Genomics, told AFP. “When we injected neutralizing antibodies into infected mice, after five days the viral load was reduced by a factor of 2,500,”  Xie further added.

“That means this potential drug has (a) therapeutic effect. “The drug uses neutralizing antibodies — produced by the human immune system to prevent the virus infecting cells — which Xie’s team isolated from the blood of 60 recovered patients.

Using the antibodies provides a potential “cure” for the disease and shortens recovery time- a study on the team’s research, published Sunday in the scientific journal Cell, suggests.

Xie said his team had been working “day and night” searching for the antibody. “Our expertise is single-cell genomics rather than immunology or virology. When we realized that the single-cell genomic approach can effectively find the neutralizing antibody we were thrilled.”

He added that the drug should be ready for use later this year and in time for any potential winter outbreak of the virus, which has infected 4.8 million people around the world and killed more than 315,000.

“Planning for the clinical trial is underway,” said Xie, adding it will be carried out in Australia and other countries since cases have dwindled in China, offering fewer human guinea pigs for testing.

“The hope is these neutralized antibodies can become a specialized drug that would stop the pandemic,” China already has five potential coronavirus vaccines at the human trial stage, a health official said last week.

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.Using antibodies in drug treatments is not a new approach, and it has been successful in treating several other viruses such as HIV, Ebola and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). Xie said his researchers had “an early start” since the outbreak started in China before spreading to other countries.
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Ebola drug Remdesivir has considered a hopeful early treatment for COVID-19 — clinical trials in the US showed it shortened the recovery time in some patients by a third — but the difference in mortality rate was not significant.
The new drug could even offer short-term protection against the virus.
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.The study showed that if the neutralizing antibody was injected before the mice were infected with the virus, the mice stayed free of infection and no virus was detected. This may offer temporary protection for medical workers for a few weeks, which Xie said they are hoping to “extend to a few months”.

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.“We would be able to stop the pandemic with an effective drug, even without a vaccine,” he said.