This article is from the WeChat public account: Interface News (ID: wowjiemian) Reporter: Xie Xin, Editor: Xu Yue
On the evening of February 13, Zhang Dingyu, the director of Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital, stated that the Jinyintan Hospital is conducting a recovery period of plasma infusion for rehabilitation patients, and it has also shown some preliminary effects, because there are a large number of comprehensive antibodies in the recovery period to fight against virus.
This is also the first time that first-line medical experts have confirmed the use of “serotherapy” for clinical treatment since the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic.
In fact, in the fourth edition of the National Health and Medical Commission’s trial version of the “Pneumonitis Diagnosis and Treatment Program for New Coronavirus Infection,” it has been formally proposed that the treatment of severe and critically ill patients “can be used in the recovery period of plasma treatment.”
The idea of using plasma infusion for rehabilitation in clinical treatment has actually existed during the fight against SARS.
Academician Zhong Nanshan had put forward a suggestion for treating SARS patients with serum from recoverers at that time, and Tiantan Biological had also developed SARS antiviral serum. Some hospitals in Hong Kong, China and Taiwan have also developed serum therapy for patients with severe SARS, and have achieved good results.
After the outbreak of the epidemic, the medical community was struggling to find medicines for the treatment of New Coronavirus pneumonia, and many industry experts had suggested to interface journalists that the use of plasma transfusion therapy for patients in rehabilitation was an option.
Simply speaking, there is no specific medicine for new crown virus pneumonia at present, and after the patient is infected with the virus, the autoimmune system will respond to the new crown virus and generate corresponding specific antibodies. When these new crown viruses are specific When the sex antibodies are of sufficient size, they may be able to defeat the new crown virus in the body.
There is always a new crown of sufficient size in the blood of the rehabilitation patient.Virus-specific antibodies, by taking their blood and processing their serum to a certain extent, can transfer antibodies in the blood of the recoverer to clinical patients through blood transfusion, helping patients with their own immune system to fight against the new crown virus.
The vaccine that the public is concerned about is actually a traditional inactivated vaccine. It is also used to vaccinate the killed virus to the human body, and then the immune system generates corresponding antibodies. It’s more straightforward.
“China Biological” also announced on the evening of February 13 that it has completed the collection of plasma from some recoverers and carried out the preparation of New Coronavirus-free plasma products and special immunoglobulins. After rigorous blood biosafety testing, virus inactivation, and antiviral activity testing, special immune plasma has been successfully prepared for clinical treatment.
On February 8th, a new coronavirus-infected pneumonia diagnosis and treatment program (trial version 5) was used as a guide. The First People’s Hospital launched new crown free plasma treatment for 3 critically ill patients. Currently, more than 10 critically ill patients are treated with the follow-up hospital. Clinically, after 12 to 24 hours of treatment, the main inflammatory indicators in the laboratory decreased significantly, the proportion of lymphocytes increased, key indicators such as blood oxygen saturation and viral load improved, and clinical signs and symptoms improved significantly.
But this method is not a panacea, and there are still many restrictions.
Dr. Hong Zhi, the co-founder, president and CEO of Tengshengbo Pharmaceuticals, previously said in an interview with the Rubik’s Cube that using the recovered patient’s serum to treat other infected patients is a common method to combat multiple infectious diseases in the past. However, this method also has some dangers, such as inconsistent serum antibody levels in different cured patients, and the inactivated serum still contains some other potentially dangerous sources.
The Pasteur Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences also previously told the media that Although serum therapy can be more effective in combating or preventing diseases caused by viruses or bacteria, the composition of the serum is complex, and there are still other questions about whether it may cause other problems. Uncertainty, not to mention its short duration and the large amount of serum required. However, through modern methods, the blood of the healer can be analyzed to obtain a fully human monoclonal antibody sequence that can effectively neutralize the virus to treat and prevent the disease caused by the virus.
Hong Zhi also mentioned that now there is a better way to use the blood of patients to heal, that is, to extract B from the patient’s blood that has memory of the virus.The cells then isolate the antibodies produced by these cells against the pathogen, which can then be used to treat other infected patients.
This is a relatively safe strategy compared with direct treatment with serum, because antibodies can be standardized for production and can be administered in standardized doses. However, he also emphasized that receiving monoclonal antibodies does not mean that it can be used directly in the treatment of other patients, because verifications such as preclinical and clinical Phase I healthy human studies are also required. It takes a lot of time and effort to produce such antibodies in large quantities. In general, it takes at least about one year from the discovery of this antibody to enabling such antibodies to be expressed in large numbers in high-yielding cells. This is very detrimental to responding to sudden outbreaks.
This article is from the WeChat public account: Interface News (ID: wowjiemian) Reporter: Xie Xin, Editor: Xu Yue