a Kovach 19 vaccine will take at least a
year to get approved which may sound
like a long time but it would actually
be record breaking new vaccines usually
take between ten and fifteen years to
get to market but a year still won't be
fast enough to hold off any upcoming
outbreaks what potentially will our
treatments a treatment helps people who
are already sick while a vaccine
prevents a disease in healthy people and
that's the main reason a vaccine is
going to take so long as of March 26th
there were over 120 different developers
pursuing three different approaches to
curing kovat 19 repurpose drugs new
antibody treatments and vaccines
vaccines unfortunately since we know
it's given to healthy people you really
have to be very careful what you give
because one you want to make sure it's
super safe that you're not going to
cause something bad by just giving the
vaccine more importantly is that when
you then get infection that the vaccine
is good to tackle the infection but it's
not going to make the reactions so
severe vaccines are designed to trigger
an immune response without actually
causing an infection by taking a
weakened inactive or partial virus and
introducing it to your system
it can start producing the right
antibodies to fight it antibodies are
created naturally by your body but it
takes time weeks sometimes months to
produce one just the right shape to fit
and therefore fight a virus your body
hasn't seen before for some people
facing the kovat 19 pandemic that's too
long to wait the infection can spread
rapidly in the lungs causing lasting
damage or even kill a person before the
body produces enough antibodies a
vaccine allows your body to go through
this process without the risk and sets
it up with memory cells that will
recognize the pathogen if it ever comes
back getting rid of it before you even
know it's there but vaccines have
extra-long clinical trial phases because
it can take weeks or months for a
participant to develop immunity
researchers then have to wait several
more months to see if they get sick
since it would be unethical
to expose them to the virus
intentionally and because vaccines are
meant to prevent it's more difficult to
get one approved for compassionate use
like when you're already so sick that
you are gonna die you'll try anything
and everything right and so the FDA
gives you permission to some things try
non-traditional drugs because you know
you're already pretty much you know
almost dead right dr. Maria Elena botas
ii leads a team at Baylor College of
Medicine that's working on a covin 19
vaccine - in fact they're using old
research a vaccine candidate from SARS
one that they developed a decade ago
it's been frozen and constantly
monitored ever since interest and
funding ran out the virus that causes
SARS and the virus that causes kovat 19
share about 70 to 80 percent of their
genetic makeup making this vaccine a
good jumping off point as it stands the
original vaccine could offer limited
protection against kovat 19 but it could
also accelerate the development of a
more effective vaccine it's a rapid
switch strategy where you start doing
some studies with the current SARS you
build evidence of safety by bringing
that molecule to the clinic fast you may
then stop there and not pursue it
meaning not persuade for licensure but
by then we will have the other one and
you can rapidly bridge Bridget in and
switch it in and then you continue the
studies with the other one that is more
specific but even with this head start
there vaccine still won't be widely
available for at least 12 months after
it's developed the vaccine will move
into safety and toxicity testing
followed by a clinical trial then FDA
approval and this is the case for all
40-plus vaccines currently in
development it's unlikely any of them
will be finished and approved in time to
effect this pandemic but they could stop
future outbreaks even the leading
frontrunner for a vaccine a candidate
developed by moderna that's already in
human trials after unconventionally by
passing animal testing is still looking
at one year or longer for commercial
release it would be a rare example of a
vaccine being approved for compassionate
use but it is worth noting that the
company is looking into emergency use of
experimental vaccine specifically for
aid workers by fall of this year besides
taking too long
vaccines don't work as well in people
who are elderly or immunocompromised two
groups that are at high risk of dying
from kovat 19 antibody treatments get
around them these treatments follow a
similar path to vaccines to widespread
use but instead of setting your body up
to make antibodies itself this treatment
injects pre-made antibodies into your
system they can be administered to
people who are infected and they'll
start clearing the virus and they'll
clear the infection within a matter of
hours they will actually help people
recover faster as well as reduce the
mortality rate they can be used
preventative ly but they don't last as
long as vaccines do so they're primarily
used as treatments but in this outbreak
medical professionals could benefit from
a preventative antibody treatment so
antibodies usually take a while to but
we're doing something that is extremely
rapid and that's because we've already
let nature do half of the work for us
Sarah Ives and other scientists at
distributed bio are working on a
monoclonal antibody based on one that is
already able to neutralize a SARS
infection because these people have
already created these antibodies in
their bodies and we are just taking
those resources because people have
already studied them already published
their sequences and we're cutting out
months two years of the drug development
process once the team identifies the new
antibodies that fit the kovat 19 virus
the tightest it still has to go through
the same trials the vaccine does but a
shorter version the team hopes to have a
drug available for widespread use by
early fall of this year and they're just
one of more than twenty developers
hoping to create a successful antibody
treatment finally repurposed drugs could
be available as early as April those are
drugs that the FDA or another regulator
has already approved to treat other
diseases and that could work for kovat
19 repurpose drugs don't need to go
through as much testing as experimental
ones which makes a great case for
compassionate use and could already
exist in large quantities the World
Health Organization has started global
trials on the four treatments that look
the most promising 3 repurposed
treatments along
one experimental drug but there's no
guarantee that any will work one of
these treatments a drug combo used to
treat HIV already failed in a small
Chinese study but the w-h-o believes a
larger trial with potentially thousands
of participants in dozens of countries
is warranted the study is unusual for
going the traditional double-blind
method which opens the study up to the
possibility of placebo effects but it
also means they can move faster and get
answers and hopefully a cure as soon as
possible as of March 24th the FDA had
approved the use of convalescent plasma
as an investigational treatment on a
limited basis it involves taking blood
plasma from a person who's recovered
from kovat 19 testing it for antibodies
and injecting the plasma or a derivative
of it into someone who's sick it's
worked in the past but not on every
disease so it's not certain if it will
be safe or effective for kovat 19 which
is why outside of clinical trials it's
only being approved for use in patients
with serious or life-threatening
infections even if it is proven to work
convalescent plasma isn't scalable the
treatment requires large amounts of
donated blood from recovered patients
and each donation can be given to only a
handful of sick patients so there's no
way to manufacture or distribute it as
widely as needed for a pandemic these
timelines are a best-case scenario where
nothing goes wrong for both treatments
and vaccines there's the potential they
won't be approved by the FDA for safety
or efficacy reasons and even if they do
get through the approval stage there's
still the issue of making sure there's
enough to go around so there's there's
three layers of issues right so there's
the money issues that you don't have
enough and require owners never enough
scalability and suitability right you
know so the logistical piece of not only
making it but delivering it and
distribute it and you know how how often
do you make them where do you store them
who's gonna buy them we are going to
need significant financial and
government support so that we can scale
up these antibodies and manufacture them
at a high
capacity to be delivered to hundreds and
hundreds of thousands of people both
treatments and vaccines are valuable and
necessary for fighting kovat 19 but the
bottom line is that we likely won't see
any way to medically treat or prevent
this disease for weeks all of the
developers are working on fairly
parallel timelines simultaneously trying
to make long-term and short-term
solutions available to the global public
and the rest of us can help by staying
home social distancing and South
quarantine are the only measures that we
can take right now to mitigate the
spread of this virus but when we have a
medicine it will allow people to go back
to work and even if the virus does start
to come back in ways it will still
reduce the burden on the healthcare
system as well as our economy
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