Drug Designed to Treat COVID-19 Could Be Authorized for Use as Early as September, Says Eli Lilly

The drugs being tested by Lily belong to a class of biotech medicines called monoclonal antibodies which are used to treat cancer, rheumatoid arthritis and several other conditions. A monoclonal antibody drug could prove far more effective against COVID-19 as compared to repurposed medicines which are currently being tested against the coronavirus.

Lily is developing one antibody treatment, currently designated LY-CoV555, in partnership with Canadian biotech AbCellera, while the other, JS016, is being developed with Chinese drugmaker Shanghai Junshi Biosciences. Both the antibody treatments work by blocking part of the virus’ so-called spike protein that it uses to enter human cells and replicate. According to Skovronsky, Lilly’s third antibody treatment candidate acts on a different part of the virus and will be tested in combination with one or both of the others. If proven to be effective, the antibody therapies could be used on a large scale as a COVID-19 treatment much earlier than a vaccine.

“For the treatment indication, particularly, this could go pretty fast,” Skovronsky told Reuters. “If in August or September we’re seeing the people who got treated are not progressing to hospitalization, that would be powerful data and could lead to emergency use authorization. So that puts you in the fall time: September, October, November is not unreasonable.”

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