Doctor Jacob Glanville, who appeared on the Netflix documentary - Pandemic, has now come out with a research that claims to have the potential treatment for the new coronavirus that causes COVID 19.
Dr. Glanville, who is one of the Founding Partners in San Francisco- based therapeutic company Centivax, announced on March 30 that his team has finally been able to develop antibodies that have the capability to neutralize the novel coronavirus strain.
"After 9 weeks, we have generated extremely potent antibodies that block the novel coronavirus from infecting human cells," Dr. Jacob Glanville said in a Twitter post.
With Coronavirus threatening to wipe out thousands of lives across the globe, the researchers at the Centivax labs took antibodies used to neutralize SARS and using technology in their lab adapted them to recognize COVID-19.
"I'm happy to report that my team has successfully taken five antibodies that back in 2002 were determined to bind and neutralize, block and stop the SARS virus," Dr Glanville told Radio New Zealand.
"We've evolved them in our laboratory, so now they very vigorously block and stop the SARS-CoV-2 [COVID-19] virus as well," he added.
Answering to a question on whether the coronavirus medicine will be a pill or an injection, Dr Glanville told CBS8 reporter Kelly Hessedal that the lab "deliberately" focused on developing a shot that would be "extremely potent" and then could be given as an injection.
The Centivax team that developed five antibodies from the 2002 SARS claims that they have a "pretty powerful tool chest" to produce a final therapeutic as all the five antibodies were able to neutralize the novel coronavirus.
Dr Glanville and his team are now in discussion with the United States government and the European Commission on chalking out a plan to work together to get the coronavirus cure whenever it is ready to release it to the "entire world."
The antibodies will be sent to the US military for carrying out the confirmation testing, after that it will be sent to the Charles River Laboratories for safety and tox characterization. Dr Glanville and the team hope to start the human trials before the end of summer.
The final coronavirus treatment is expected to be available for use by September if it is able to clear all tests.
