From Simon Goodman, Griesheim, Germany
Your pandemic coverage asks: “What are the most promising medicines?” Vaccines are among them, but we don’t yet know if they will work well (1 August, p 9). In any event, many people will be without a vaccine for a very long time. So, as you say, we also need therapeutics to treat those people acutely ill with covid-19.
On this front, Adam Vaughan chiefly looks at attempts to repurpose existing anti-inflammatory and anti-viral drugs, only briefly acknowledging that some firms are developing new ones to tackle covid-19.
In fact, there is a lot of work on antibody therapeutics against covid-19. The Antibody Society, of which I am the science and technology program manager, has noted 13 clinical trials in progress from nine companies, including several phase III late-stage trials. Fifteen more antibody therapies are planned to enter clinical trials before 2021.
