This archive report was first published on 19 May 2020.
Published on May 19, 2020, a Chinese laboratory has been developing a drug that could potentially bring the coronavirus pandemic to an end.
The outbreak first emerged in China late last year before spreading across the world, prompting an international race to find treatments and vaccines.
Researchers at Peking University's Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Genomics have been working on a drug that uses neutralising antibodies to prevent the virus from infecting cells.
According to Sunney Xie, director of the university's Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Genomics, the drug has been successful in animal testing, reducing the viral load by a factor of 2,500 in just five days.
"When we injected neutralising antibodies into infected mice, after five days the viral load was reduced by a factor of 2,500," Xie said.
The drug uses 14 neutralising antibodies isolated from the blood of 60 recovered patients, which could be put into mass production quickly.
"Our expertise is single-cell genomics rather than immunology or virology. When we realised that the single-cell genomic approach can effectively find the neutralising antibody we were thrilled," Xie said.
The drug is expected to be ready for use later this year and could offer short-term protection against the virus, potentially extending to a few months.
