Good News in fight against CoronaVirus Pandemic for SeroNegative Hospitalized patients – Regeneron’s “REGEN-COV” gives promising results
LONDON, 16th June, 2021 (The HQ News) – “REGEN-COV™” (casirivimab and imdevimab) is a cocktail with promising results in the fight against CoronaVirus SeroNegative patients as announced in a large British study published on Wednesday.
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc’s coronavirus antibody cocktail “REGEN-COV™” reduces deaths in hospitalized patients whose own antibody response was inactive to the virus, the phenomenon known as “seronegative”, as per medical sources.
The study is based on 9,785 patients hospitalized with CoronaVirus of whom 30 % were seronegative, as per sources.
The study shows that the results from RECOVERY TRIAL provide strong proof of its effectiveness among hospitalized patients – reducing deaths by a fifth i.e. six lesser deaths for every 100 seronegative patients.
The REGEN-COV treatment also shortened the hospital stay of those who were seronegative and reduced their chances of needing a mechanical ventilator, while having no adverse affects on those patients who had generated natural antibody responses (seropositive patients).
These hospitalized patients were randomly allocated to receive usual care plus the antibody combination therapy or just usual care.
The RECOVERY trial also involved use of Roche’s arthritis drug Actemra (tocilizumab) and the steroid dexamethasone on some patients which also reduced deaths in hospitalized patients as these focus on inflammation caused by reaction to the coronavirus, while in totally opposite approach the Regeneron’s therapy which are type of biotech drugs called monoclonal antibodies, mimic natural antibodies the body produces to fight off the infection and target the virus itself.
Erlier on June 4, the company had announced that the FDA has authorised a lower dose of their investigational anti-body cocktail for emergency use.
The company’s website claims that in vitro research has shown that REGEN-COV retains potency against the main variants of concern circulating within the U.S., including the P.1 variant (first identified in Brazil, now classified by the World Health Organization [WHO] as Gamma) and the B.1.351 variant (first identified in South Africa, now classified by the WHO as Beta). Consequently, REGEN-COV remains available for use in all 50 states.
#COVID19 news: The FDA has authorized a lower dose of our investigational antibody cocktail for emergency use. Read more: https://t.co/XIjKtqYMI1 pic.twitter.com/EzwlOLs2zO
— Regeneron (@Regeneron) June 4, 2021
“REGEN-COV™” (casirivimab and imdevimab) is a cocktail of two monoclonal antibodies (also known as REGN10933 and REGN10987) that was designed specifically to block infectivity of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, using Regeneron’s proprietary VelocImmune® and VelociSuite® technologies. The two potent, virus-neutralizing antibodies that form the cocktail bind non-competitively to the critical receptor binding domain of the virus’s spike protein, which diminishes the ability of mutant viruses to escape treatment and protects against spike variants that have arisen in the human population, as detailed in Science.