Hundreds of labs working on vaccines…thousands of hospitals carrying tests through plasma therapy…while scientists and doctors across the globe are racing to put an end to the dreadful coronavirus, a special team in University of Hyderabad (UoH) has come up with a proven possibility to contain the novel viral infection.
With an aim to develop an antibody fragment-based immunotherapy for immediate treatment for COVID-19 pandemic, University of Hyderabad (UoH) and Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in association with Vins Bioproducts Ltd, a startup incubated at the UoH has come up with an idea of using antibodies generated in horses.
Though Plasma Therapy has been showing positive results in clinal trails, limitation in the availability of human plasma samples has come as the constraint to the doctors. Upon which the scientists are looking for alternatives like using animal plasma to generate antibodies against the SARS-COV2 viral antigens.
According to the UoH team of scientists, Horse-based immunoglobulins can be produced in large quantities as a promising alternative therapy, which would be economical and can be made readily available to a larger population. In the line of which, the antibodies raised in horses using inactivated Coronavirus is fractionated and purified to produce antibody fragments F(ab’)2 for neutralising Coronavirus in the patients for recovery. UoH Vice-Chancellor Prof. Appa Rao Podile expressed happiness at this collaborative effort.
