John Kokai-Kun, Ph.D. is the Director of External Scientific Collaboration for USP. He received his B.S. in biochemistry from Juniata College in Huntingdon, PA, and his Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine. He also served as a post-doctoral researcher at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) in Bethesda, MD.
Even as vaccines are hailed as our best hope against the coronavirus, dozens of scientific groups are working on an alternate defense: monoclonal antibodies. These therapies shot to prominence just this month after President Donald Trump got an infusion of an antibody cocktail made by Regeneron and credited it for his apparent recovery, even calling it a “cure.”
A network of scientists is chasing the pandemic’s holy grail: an antibody that protects against not just the virus, but also related pathogens that may threaten humans.
It’s a finite capacity, and there are only so many things you can do to try to increase that capacity. I don’t see monoclonal antibodies being at large-scale use in the public. They’re just too complicated to make and too expensive to really be effective in that regard.
It’s a finite capacity, and there are only so many things you can do to try to increase that capacity. I don’t see monoclonal antibodies being at large-scale use in the public. They’re just too complicated to make and too expensive to really be effective in that regard.