Dr K Aggarwal President CMAAO, HCFI, With input from Dr Monica Vasudev
India
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New Delhi, April 18, 2021 :
- Coronavirus variant first identified in Brazil, known as P.1, is resistant to three of the four antibody therapies with emergency use authorization in the United States
- Researchers exposed the P.1 variant to various monoclonal antibodies, including the four currently being used to treat U.S. COVID-19 patients – imdevimab and casirivimab from Regneron Pharmaceuticals, and bamlanivimab and etesevimab from Eli Lilly and Co.
- Only imdevimab retained any potency
- The neutralizing ability of the other three were “markedly or completely abolished,” according to a peer reviewed report available on bioRxiv and provisionally accepted by the journal Cell Host & Microbe.
- The researchers also exposed P.1 to plasma from COVID-19 survivors and blood from recipients of vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna. Compared to their effects against the original version of the coronavirus, the plasma and the vaccine-induced antibodies were less effective at neutralizing P.1. In earlier studies, however, they were even less effective against the B.1.351 variant first identified in South Africa.
- Brazil variant might not pose as great a threat of reinfection or decreased vaccine protection as the South Africa variant
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