The race is on to find a safe and effective treatment for the new coronavirus — and while scientists around the world are working feverishly to that end, one immunologist here in the States believes he may have the answer.
Speaking with Fox News‘ Tucker Carlson on Friday’s episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight, Dr. Jacob Glanville, an immunologist, revealed that his company’s laboratory has engineered a new treatment for COVID-19 that he believes may work better — and faster — than a vaccine.
Turning the tide
According to Fox, Glanville is the CEO and co-founder of Distributed Bio, a company that has been on the front lines of the fight against infectious diseases.
When it comes to COVID-19, however, the stakes have changed. Johns Hopkins University had reported more than 330,000 cases of the virus in the U.S. alone as of Sunday evening, and the country is quickly nearing 10,000 deaths.
But Glanville thinks he may have a solution. “What we have done is we’ve engineered neutralizing antibodies that go and block the virus,” he told Carlson on Friday, according to Fox. “The coronavirus, if you were to zoom in on it, you would see a series, a ring of spikes, and it uses those spikes to invade human cells.
“We’ve identified a series of super-potent antibodies that block those spikes and therefore make the virus no longer infectious,” Glanville added.
The immunologist said it was the use of similar treatments that turned Ebola from a “death sentence” into a “manageable” infection. Similar methods have also been used to treat diseases like rabies and RSV, and “are used, too, for anti-venom,” the doctor said.
“This is the thing that turned the tide against Ebola. The Ebola used to be a death sentence, about 50% mortality rate,” he said, according to Fox. “And then once a good antibody neutralizing solution was made, then I think 94% of people can walk away.”
“Every day counts”
According to Glanville, such treatment provides an advantage over other methods, like vaccines, which can take months to years to develop.
“You can produce antibodies much faster than you can make a vaccine,” the doctor explained to Carlson, according to Fox. “And as I’d heard you mentioned previously on all that modeling, every day counts. We’re venting an incredible amount of money out of our economy and risking lives. And so you want to have a medicine as quickly as possible.”
Of course, this new treatment will likely take some time to test, and even more time will be needed before it becomes widely available.
That said, any development that gets us closer to the end of this deadly outbreak is a good one. As Glanville said, every day counts.
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