The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved an advance gift for those suffering from Covid-19 this holiday season. in moderate to severe conditions. All remedies at this level of the pandemic have only been temporarily approved through an emergency use authorization, a testament to the price of tocilizumab. Here we talk about how the antibody was discovered and how it works.
Unlike many of the monoclonal antibody treatments we analyzed, tocilizumab has a long history dating back 25 years. The clinical progression of the antibody began in 1997 through Chugai Pharmaceuticals in Japan to treat rheumatoid arthritis. Chugai Pharmaceuticals and Genentech are now under the umbrella of Roche Group, a Swiss multinational health company.
Researchers at Chugai Pharmaceuticals found that antibodies from the express mice contained human anti-IL-6 receptors. Interleukin-6, or IL-6, is a secreted cytokine protein that is expressed through white blood cells. In terms of disease, IL-6 stimulates inflammatory processes. when the framework is exposed to pathogens and clinical situations such as diabetes, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis.
After identifying human anti-IL-6 receptors in mice, the researchers grafted the receptor onto an Fc region consisting of recombinant human IgG DNA technology, humanizing the receptor well.
Further studies through Kishimoto et al. showed that the modified mouse antibody receptor grafted into human Fc consisting of human IgG exclusively blocked IL-6 transsignaling without affecting other pathways.
Inhibition of IL-6 sufficiently blocks inflammation without inhibiting other immune defenses that oppose infection. Contrary to popular belief, many of the ancient symptoms we revel in when we have health problems are not directly caused by an invading pathogen, but by the action of our immune system. combat opposite to the pathogen.
Inflammation is one of the major causes of body aches, fatigue, fever, skin rashes, and other vital symptoms that persist in most cases. In severe cases, the inflammation can cause severe pain, loss of appetite, and severe headaches and chills.
To mass-produce the drug, Chugai Pharmaceutical used genetic manipulation of the host mobiles. They encoded the genes that encode tocilizumab production in a human host T mobile. The coded T mobile is then transfected into Chinese hamster ovary mobiles. These mobiles are manipulated for countless explicit tocilizumab genes, creating a master that can be copied times.
In 2005, tocilizumab was approved in Japan to treat Castleman disease, a rare disease involving an overactive immune formula and chronic hyperinflammation. In 2010, the drug was approved in the United States and the European Union for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.
Most recently, the drug was approved through an emergency use authorization through the FDA in June 2021 for the treatment of Covid-19 in hospitalized patients receiving systemic corticosteroids and requiring supplemental oxygen, noninvasive or invasive mechanical ventilation, or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). ).
Its full approval by the FDA attests to the effectiveness of the drug in hospitalized patients. While much of the world is content to proclaim the end of the pandemic, the number of cases and hospitalizations is not the same. We will have to continue with the studies to have remedies and continue their distribution with the same urgency that we had in the first months of the pandemic. In the next article we will talk about the efficacy of tocilizumab for the remedy of Covid-19, leading to its approval.