Today, Lower Saxony’s Minister of Health, Dr. Carola Reimann, took a look at the data on human antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, and discussed possible treatment options with Dr. Thomas Schirrmann.
“Without a vaccine or a drug, the only effective means of fighting the corona virus at present is to restrict social contacts and to observe rules of distance and hygiene. If we want to relax the measures and slowly return to a normal life, we also need a therapy. The results achieved here in Braunschweig in such a short time are very promising and give hope.”
Dr. Carola Reimann, Minister of Health
Since 27 January 2020, SARS-CoV-2 has also arrived in Germany. It has spread worldwide in a very short time and reached almost every country. It has been proven that 2.57 million people are now infected with the virus (as of 22 April 2020, 9:38 a.m.; data from Johns Hopkins University) – and the number of undetected cases is estimated to be many times higher. The number of deaths caused by the virus is also increasing rapidly and has now reached almost 177,521. One reason for this is that no vaccine or effective medication against the virus is yet available. The whole world is working flat out to find one. YUMAB, the mother company of COART Therapeutics, has been generating and optimising antibodies as active ingredients for drug development very successfully for more than seven years for biotech and pharmaceutical customers worldwide to declare war on the novel SARS-CoV-2. With its complex and sophisticated phage display technology and an antibody library containing 100 billion (10 to 11) different human antibodies, it has already been able to identify antibodies that could potentially be used as active ingredients against the virus in less than four weeks. Initial tests have shown that these antibodies can bind to a surface protein of the virus and thus prevent it from infecting host cells.
