Covid-19: Bharat Biotech leads CSIR approved project to develop human monoclonal antibodies

HYDERABAD: After joining hands with US-based vaccine maker FluGen and virologists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to develop an intra-nasal Covid-19 vaccine, Hyderabad-based vaccines and biotherapeutics maker Bharat Biotech is now leading a project to develop human monoclonal antibodies as therapy for Covid-19 infections.
The academia-industry collaborative project, which brings together Pune-based National Centre for Cell Science (NCCS) and the Indian Institute of Technology, Indore, Gurugram-based PredOmix Technologies and Bharat Biotech, has been approved by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) under its flagship programme NMITLI (New Millennium Indian Technology Leadership Initiative).
The project is aimed at developing an alternate Covid-19 therapeutic regimen by generating highly effective and specific human monoclonal antibodies that are capable of neutralising the SARS-CoV2 virus.
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“Such virus-neutralising antibodies can block the spread of infection by binding to the virus and rendering it ineffective. Monoclonal antibody therapy is a highly effective and safe method,” Bharat Biotech said on Friday.
The collaboration comes even as global efforts are underway for the development of drugs and vaccines for controlling the Covid-19 pandemic, but these are slow and expensive processes with uncertainties which is why an alternate therapeutic regimen for early deployment is critical, the company said.
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“The purpose of vaccination is to protect the healthy against future infections and it alone may not provide the complete solution. We feel the monoclonal antibody therapy will provide a viable option. The question is of how to treat those individuals who are already infected? Plus, we do not yet know how effective an anti-SARS-CoV2 vaccine will be in elderly people and those with co-morbidities. Given the large number of Indians suffering from hypertension, diabetes, and heart diseases, this becomes an important issue,” said Bharat Biotech Ltd chairman and managing director Dr Krishna Ella.
Talking about the novel antibodies approach to deal with Covid-19, Dr Ella said, “While both Israel and The Netherlands have recently announced the development of virus-neutralising antibodies, our approach is to develop a powerful cocktail of neutralizing antibodies that can also simultaneously block mutational variants of the virus. We are fast-tracking the development process, to make the antibodies available within the next six months and thus improve the treatment efficacy.”