courtesy: dw.com
The AstraZeneca Plc’s antibody cocktail was only 33 per cent effective at preventing COVID-19 symptoms in people who had been exposed to the virus, failing a study that was key to the drug makers pandemic push.
The trial consisting of 1,121 adult volunteers looked at whether the long-acting antibody combination could protect people who had recently been in contact with the SARS-CoV-2 virus in places like the care homes. The company said that it’s running other studies of the medicine that could help clarify the findings.
The outcome is a blow to AstraZeneca for a drug that was hoped to be bright spot in the company’s pandemic efforts following the mixed success of its vaccine with the University of Oxford.
Myrin Levin, the study’s lead researcher and a professor of medicine at the University of Colorado, said that there was still a ‘significant need’ for prevention and treatment options for certain populations, including those unable to be vaccinated or those who may have had an inadequate response to the vaccination.
The medicine caught attention even before it efficiency was proven. The US has ordered up to 700,000 doses for delivery in 2021 whereas UK was reconsidering their previous order for one million doses.
The study showed 23 volunteers who got the cocktail developed symptomatic COVID-19 following exposure to the disease, compared with 17 cases in the placebo group, according to a statement made on Tuesday.
The drug did have a few impacts in the prevention of the disease for those who were not previously infected or at the time of dosing.
The trial, named Storm Chaser, was one of the six advanced stage studies Astra is running to test the medicine. Another one called Provent, looking at whether the cocktail can prevent infection in people at high risk of catching COVID-19 or with compromised immune systems, was also expected to report the results soon.
Antibody drugs may provide the much-needed treatments as countries encounter new variants and waves of infections amid the varying speeds of vaccine rollouts. A number of companies are testing antibody drugs as measures of both prevention and treatment.
Eli Lilly & Co.’s authorisation for an antibody treatment was revoked in the April amid questions over it’s effectiveness, but the company then had the product cleared for use in the combination with another antibody.