A Chinese laboratory has been trying to develop a drug which it believes has the power to bring the coronavirus pandemic to a halt.
The outbreak first emerged in China late last year before spreading across the world, prompting an international race to find treatments and proabably a cure.
Scientists of China’s prestigious Peking University are testing a drug which could not only decrease the recovery time for those infected, but even offer short-term immunity from the virus, according to the researchers.
Sunney Xie, director of the university’s Beijing Advanced Innovation Centre for Genomics, told AFP that the drug has been successful at the animal testing stage.
“When we injected neutralising antibodies into infected mice, after five days the viral load was reduced by a factor of 2,500,” said Mr Xie.
The drug uses neutralising antibodies, produced by the human immune system to prevent the virus infecting cells, which Mr Xie’s team isolated from the blood of 60 recovered patients.
He added that the drug should be ready for human usage this year and in time for any potential winter outbreak of the virus, which has infected 4.8 million people around the world and killed more than 315,000.
“Planning for the clinical trial is under way,” said Mr Xie, adding it will be carried out in Australia and other countries since cases have dwindled in China, offering fewer human guinea pigs for testing.
“The hope is these neutralised antibodies can become a specialised drug that would stop the pandemic,” he said.
China already has five potential coronavirus vaccines at the human trial stage, a health official said last week.