A replacement for a key COVID-19 antibody that has been used to protect immunocompromised Americans could be available within months, executives at drugmaker AstraZeneca said Thursday, after promising effects suggested it could be against “all known variants of concern. “to date.
The company’s new investigational drug, recently called AZD3152, is being tested in a trial dubbed “Supernova” in hopes of preventing symptomatic infections in other people with weakened immune systems. The effects of this study are expected to be published until September, an AstraZeneca spokesman said. showed to CBS News.
This could cause a potential emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration to make the drug available until the end of the year, when another resurgence of COVID-19 is expected in the fall and winter.
The company has already announced promising first data from laboratory studies on the drug, against existing and past strains of SARS-CoV-2.
“In vitro studies have shown that AZD3152 neutralizes all variants of COVID-19, adding Arcturus, the newest variant of concern,” AstraZeneca’s Mene Pangalos told investors on an earnings call this week.
AstraZeneca says the drug can only benefit about 2% of the population that develops an effective immune reaction from COVID-19 vaccines.
“We hope to make AZD3152 available as a new prophylactic remedy in the current part of this year,” Pangalos said.
Federal officials have expressed fears about the lack of functions for immunocompromised Americans even as the pandemic emergency fades.
A flood of immunoevasive variants of Omicron over the past year has partly limited Covid-19 treatment and prevention functions for the most vulnerable patients.
AZD3152 builds on some of the same technologies that underpinned its predecessor Evusheld, which he also authorized in hopes of protecting immunocompromised Americans from infection.
The FDA withdrew emergency use authorization for this prophylactic drug in January, bringing to light the growing prevalence of variants contrary to those it would work with.
AstraZeneca says its new drug AZD3152 is in another antibody, derived from B cells provided by other people who have recovered from infections, and that it is “designed to have broader variant coverage” than Evusheld for six months.
Immunocompromised patients who eventually become inflamed can be treated with antiviral drugs for COVID-19, such as Pfizer’s Paxlovid treatments or Gilead’s Vekluri. However, those drugs can lead to suppression of the virus, but not its elimination, in immunocompromised patients.
“There are monoclonal successors that are being upgraded to get the next generation of variants. And I hope, again, that we will know more about that in the coming months,” said Peter Marks of the FDA. said last month a webinar hosted through the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.
Other features that may benefit others with weakened immune systems, such as sotrovimab, GSK’s monoclonal antibody therapy, have also been thwarted by new strains of Omicron.
“Obviously, it’s a matter of urgency here because, for immunocompromised people, it would be great to have something,” Marks said.
Biden’s management has blamed a lack of congressional investment for hampering the production of new antibodies to COVID-19, though a new injection of federal investment is now planned.
“I think we’ve been very transparent that we’re running out of dollars because of COVID. We’ve gotten it over and over again, but we haven’t had the winter surge we hoped for and we had more funding,” Deputy Secretary for Preparedness and Response said Dawn O’Connell at a House hearing last week.
Federal officials recently announced that they had lost $5 billion to a “Project NextGen” effort to subsidize new vaccines and antibodies.
“Creating the next generation of equipment to protect Americans from COVID is a moderate use of the next dollars,” O’Connell said.