Kind: captions
Language: en
[Applause]
i don't know what it was antibodies
antibodies i don't know
i took it i said i felt like superman
president trump says he's recovered from
covid19
in part thanks to an antibody cocktail
they gave me regeneron it's called
regeneron
and other things too but i think this
was the key the reason that this is
called a cocktail
is because they have two separate
antibodies that have been developed and
that are given together
according to the white house physician
president trump received three
treatments for the coronavirus
a steroid called dexamethasone antiviral
drug rem desevere
and biotech company regeneron's cocktail
of monoclonal antibodies
so what are all these drugs and how can
we know if any of them
actually make a difference i can't tell
you which one of those
was um effective um it may have been all
three it may have been
that he was already on his way to
getting better and had he received no
therapy he would have gotten better
the steroid dexamethasone is usually
given to patients to stop the immune
system from raging out of control
rem desevere is an antiviral drug
originally developed to treat ebola
and was identified early on as a
possible covent treatment
it's designed to gum up the tiny
molecular machinery inside a cell that
makes copies of the virus
wrapped in a fatty shell with protein
spikes
to make these stuff and if you can't
make copies of itself then that it can't
continue with the infection
regeneron's cocktail works a little
differently it gives the body's natural
immune response a boost
by delivering antibodies to it
antibodies are proteins naturally made
by the immune system to protect against
foreign invaders like viruses
whenever someone is infected with say a
virus and particularly for clovid19 they
do develop
antibodies which is a type of immune
response
and this immune response helps us clear
the infection
and recover most people it takes about
two weeks to develop that immune
response
but these antibodies known as monoclonal
antibodies
are manufactured synthetically produced
antibody clones that target a specific
piece of the virus
monoclonal antibody treatment was
pioneered by congolese scientist
jean-jacques muyombe to treat ebola
and monoclonal just means that it's made
in the factory like imagine just sort of
printing it out every antibody looks
exactly the same
what a monoclonal antibody is is
identifying that type of antibody maybe
one or two
that are really effective at least in
the lab in neutralizing this virus
and then making that antibody stay in a
factory
um putting it into a vial and then just
giving it
with a syringe to a patient so you're
basically giving them instead of waiting
two weeks you're giving them the
antibody
right away these monoclonal antibodies
block the virus from getting into our
cells and replicating
by binding to it and neutralizing it and
start to direct these
treatments are not yet available outside
of clinical trials
and so these early data suggests that
the treatment might reduce the amount of
virus in non-hospitalized patients
what was found is that the antibody
combination did result in speeding up
the clearance of the virus
from the upper airways of these patients
particularly those who did not have
antibodies to start with which means
that they were
very early on in their illness as
opposed to others
but there is limited data on how
effective these drugs are in treating
the coronavirus
and even less is known about how they
interact with each other
the treatments trump received are still
being studied in clinical trials
which are studies that test the safety
and effectiveness of new drugs in humans
but a drug may not improve outcomes for
everyone
and when patients agree to be part of a
clinical trial they don't necessarily
get the new drug
in a randomized controlled or
double-blind study individuals
sign up to be in the study and then
they're just kind of randomly assigned
to either get the
the active product like brenda severe or
a placebo a randomized controlled trial
especially if it's double blind is
considered the gold standard
um and without it you know we always
have that little bit of doubt
does it really work i really don't know
but if i see the results from a
randomized controlled
trial you know then i'm a believer
another clinical trial of monoclonal
antibodies
this one by eli lilly was recently
paused due to potential safety concern
now an independent review board will
look at the data collected so far
to determine if it's safe for the study
to continue
but a monoclonal antibody could reach
hospitals before clinical trials
conclude
both eli lilly and regeneron filed for
emergency use
authorization with the fda which would
allow the drug to be administered before
it's fully approved
is the way that the fda says that
there's um
enough data in sort of a dire situation
to say okay it's okay to use this
medicine
until we have enough data to get full
authorization
it doesn't mean that it doesn't still
need to get fda authorization
through the typical pathways but it's a
way for people to get early access to a
drug
that might be that might be life-saving
although the preliminary data is
promising
there is still much more testing to be
done before a drug is fully approved
and even when treatments are shown to
work there are still
issues of access and cost
still some remain optimistic about the
rapid progress science has made so far
i must say looking back um i'm actually
really proud of what
we've been able to accomplish really
kind of grassroots as well like a lot of
investigators and scientists just
working together
very very quickly to stand up incredibly
complex studies and
huge multi-center studies with brand new
interventions
um and the fact that we can have data
really within six months showing
interventions that have a mortality
benefit like dexamethasone i think is
actually
pretty incredible so you know it's hard
we always think about the
mistakes or lost opportunities um but
you know i think over time i'll look
back and say that there were a lot of
winners
during this as well and some pretty
amazing accomplishments
you