Antibody fragment based therapy underway for treating COVID-19

Though plasma-based passive immunity against COVID-19 has been reported to be working well in clinical trials, UoH and CSIR-centre are developing antibody fragment-based Immunotherapy for immediate treatment.

Hyderabad: The University of Hyderabad (UoH) and CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology are collaborating with Vins Bioproducts Ltd, a well-known antisera manufacturing company to develop antibody fragment-based Immunotherapy for immediate treatment for COVID-19 pandemic.

The use of antibodies has been an effective method in protecting against several human and animal diseases.

Although plasma-based passive immunity against COVID-19 has been reported to be working well in clinical trials, it has several theoretical and practical concerns including limitation in the availability of human plasma samples.

As the pandemic has become a major global crisis, scientists are exploring alternative strategies of using horses or other higher animals to generate antibodies against the SARS-COV2 viral antigens.

The antibodies, raised in horses using inactivated coronavirus is fractionated and purified to produce antibody fragments F(ab’)2 for neutralizing coronavirus in the patients for recovery.

Horse-based immunoglobulins can be produced in large quantities as a promising alternative therapy, which would be economical and can be made readily available to a larger population. The collaborators have complementary expertise required for developing the therapy for treating the COVID-19 pandemic.

The team is quite hopeful about this treatment and feels that this would be more productive, efficient, safe, which can meet the enormous requirement for the treatment of COVID-19 infection.

The UoH team is headed by Dr. Nooruddin Khan, an Associate Professor at the Department of Animal Biology, School of Life Sciences.

The Team at CCMB is headed by Dr. Krishnan Harinivas, who is a principal scientist and specializes in the area of molecular virology. Dr. Krishna Mohan is leading the research team at VINS. Dr. Mohan specializes in bio-processing and product Development.

Mr. Siddharth Daga, CEO of Vins Bioproducts Ltd., expressed his confidence in the fast track development by complimenting the technical and infrastructural strengths available in the three collaborating organizations and making available a very specific therapeutic anti-viral product in the shortest possible time.

Prof. Appa Rao Podile, Vice-Chancellor, UoH expressed happiness at this collaborative effort and hoped that this would result in successful development of antibody fragment-based immunotherapy for immediate treatment for COVID-19 pandemic at the earliest.