Coronavirus: Antibody treatment for Covid-19 to be trialled in UK hospitals

Experimental drug ‘cocktail’ will be given to thousands of patients in the hope it can less severity and reduce deaths

An antibody treatment that could lessen the symptoms of the coronavirus is to be trialled on hospital patients in UK.

The UK Recovery Trial project — co-ordinated by experts at the University of Oxford — will assess the impact of laboratory-made antibodies on 2,000 patients in the coming weeks.  

An experimental antibody “cocktail” called REGN-COV2 will be given alongside the standard care to see if the new drug lessens the severity of the disease and can even reduce the number of deaths.

“This is the first drug actually designed for this disease,” said Martin Landray, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at Oxford University who is co-leading the trial. “There are lots of good reasons for thinking this might be really quite a powerful treatment.”

England’s deputy chief medical officer, Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, hailed the news as “another promising step in the search to find effective treatments”.

The top health official added: “I look forward to seeing how REGN-COV2 performs in clinical trials, and I urge people to volunteer in this research, which could ultimately save many lives.”

Until now, Oxford’s recovery trial project had mostly been studying whether existing drugs could be re-purposed to tackle the new disease — and it has already found answers on a number of them.

In June and September, trial results showed that steroids such as dexamethasone and hydrocortisone were able to reduce death rates among severely-ill Covid-19 patients.

The US firm Regeneron’s REGN-COV2 cocktail now under trial in the UK combines two different “monoclonal” or man-made antibodies, which act like human antibodies in the immune system.

The combination is designed to bind to the spike protein used by the new coronavirus to gain access to human cells, aimed at limiting the virus’s ability to escape.

A box of Dexamethasone at a pharmacy in London (EPA)

Peter Horby, professor of emerging infectious diseases and global health at the University of Oxford and chief investigator of the trial, said: “We have already discovered that one treatment, dexamethasone, benefits Covid-19 patients, but the death rate remains too high so we must keep searching for others.

He added: “We are looking forward to seeing whether REGN-COV2 is safe and effective in the context of a large-scale randomised clinical trial. This is the only way to be certain about whether it works as a treatment for Covid-19.”

Nick Cammack, leading Covid-19 therapeutics work for The Wellcome Trust, said new antiviral and antibody drugs were “among the most exciting and promising treatments for Covid-19” — but pointed out they are also among the most expensive.

“Large-scale randomised controlled studies like Recovery give us the best understanding of whether drugs like REGN-COV2 are safe and effective against Covid-19, but we must ensure that any successful treatment is available to everyone who needs it globally,” he said.

Regeneron has linked up with the pharmaceutical giant Roche to increase the global supply of REGN-COV2 should it prove effective.

The US government already has a $450m (£350m) deal for the cocktail in place, under the terms of which Regeneron will sell it around 70,000 to 300,000 potential treatment doses of REGN-COV2.

The firm said that studies already done on animals have shown the cocktail can reduce the amount of virus and damage to the lungs.

Professor Fiona Watt, executive chairwoman of the UK’s Medical Research Council, said monoclonal antibodies had already proved effective in treating cancer and autoimmune diseases.

“The new trial will tell us whether antibodies that attack the virus can be an effective treatment for Covid-19,” she said.