Biopharma starts clinical trials on possible treatment for COVID-19 

Ukrainian pharmaceutical giant Biopharma has launched clinical trials to investigate an antibody treatment that could be used on patients suffering from severe cases of the COVID-19 respiratory disease. 

The firm is using immunoglobulin, or antibodies made from the plasma cells of patients who have fully recovered from COVID-19, the co-owner of the Biopharma company Kostyantyn Yefymenko announced on April 24. 

In recent weeks a number of experts from around the world, including the businessman and philanthropist Bill Gates, have stated that the secret to an effective treatment or vaccine for COVID-19 may be found in the blood or plasma of patients who have survived the infection. Multiple clinical trials are ongoing in different countries to test this theory. 

If the effectiveness of Biopharma’s new drug, called Bioven, is proven, it could help doctors to treat patients in Ukraine who have severe cases of pneumonia caused by the coronavirus infection.

“People are scared. Nobody understands how long it will last and to what consequences will lead to,” wrote Yefymenko on his Facebook page. “Biopharma cannot ignore the global challenges of the pandemic.” 

He said it took the company only eight working days for the company’s team and healthcare advocates to collect all the necessary documentation to get approval for clinical trials from the Ministry of Health of Ukraine.

Yefymenko expects that within next two or three months his company will be able to collect the required volume of plasma, 300 liters, from people recovered from COVID-19 in Ukraine. 

If that happens and if the drug is proven to be effective then Biopharma says it would be able to start production by August, and make the drug available to hospitals one month later.

Yefymenko also believes that this new drug will be even more effective than vaccination, since only healthy people can be vaccinated, while immunoglobulin treatments could help those afflicted with the disease and it has no broad contraindications, he said. 

Sergiy Kovalchuk, deputy director at Biopharma, said that it will take the laboratory more than six months to produce such a drug.

“It’s quite hard to collect plasma and to work with it during production,” said Kovalchuk in a comment to local news agency in the city Bila Tserkva in Kyiv Oblast, where Biopharma’s drug plant is located.

According to Science News magazine, in the early stages of the disease, the virus infects cells to make many copies of itself, causing severe inflammation.

In very severe cases of the disease the body’s defense mechanisms don’t help to fight the virus and instead they start attacking vital organs. But as soon as a patient is recognized as critically ill like this, passive antibody therapy may help to fight the coronavirus infection, some doctors say.  

Some scientists believe that antibodies in plasma cells may prevent the virus from expanding its numbers inside the body of a patient. 

Jeffrey Henderson, an infectious disease physician and scientist at Washington University School of Medicine, told Science News that he is using “antibody-rich plasma to treat infection in another patient.”

Andriy Rybakov, co-founder of Public Science, a project for the popularization of science, was among those who helped the Biopharma company to start clinical trials in the shortest possible period of time. 

“I believe in this project. Only together we can be a force,” said Rybakov.

Source: www.kyivpost.com