It's Thursday, October eight. I'm Oscar Ramirez from the Daily Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America. More good news on treatments for COVID nineteen. Pharmaceutical company Eli Lily has requested the emergency use authorization of its antibody based treatment for people with mild to moderate symptoms of coronavirus. The treatment is similar to the one that President Trump received, and they could have one thousand doses ready this month and one million by the end of
the year. Peter loftus healthcare reporter at the Wall Street Journal, joins us for more. Pharmaceutical company Eli Lily has requested the emergency use authorization of an experimental antibody based treatment that they have for COVID nineteen. This is similar to
what the President was getting this monoclonal antibodies. He got it from a company called Regeneron, but Eli Lily has something similar and they're saying that there's works okay and in clinical trials that they've been going through already, and they think that they can seek approval as early as the next month. Peter tell us a little bit more about this one. Well, yes, it is a similar approach to what I think a lot of people have heard in the news about one of the treatments that President
Trump got, an antibody based treatment. In this case with Eli Lially, what they did was they formed a partnership with another company where they actually took a blood sample from one of the first people in the US to recover from COVID nineteen and they isolated certain antibodies in
the blood sample. These are things produced by the immune system that helped someone overcome a virus and infection, and so then to make a drug out of that, you essentially clone that antibody and make bigger quantities of it and then confuse it in people to test it. And so that's what Eli Lily has done. They've spent the last several months manufacturing doses of this and then testing
them in various studies. And so what they're seeking authorization for is to use this antibody based drug as a treatment for people who are recently diagnosed with COVID and have mild moderate disease, and with the hopes that the antibody would actually prevent that disease from getting worse and keep people out of the hospital. And so ELI only has some results from the studies so far that suggests
that this antibody can do that. It's so interesting kind of getting this education as we go through this pandemic, how a lot of these therapeutics and treatments are being made. And early on we were talking about convalescent plasma, literally taking the blood that has antibodies and it from people that have had COVID and recovered and putting that into people. Now we're going through these treatments. As you said, we're using those same antibodies and making clones of them and
kind of making these treatments from that. So it really is interesting how these things are developing. Tell us about the study they started it in nursing homes and tell us how it worked and with the effectiveness of it. The first study for this drug was actually the inhospitalized patients, and that was a very small study and they haven't said a ton about that study, but I think they had what they considered promising results, and then they moved
on to somewhat bigger study in non hospitalized patients. So these would be people who have a diagnosis, maybe have some symptoms, but they haven't yet gotten to a severe stage. So they've tested, you know, having those people come into a clinic and giving them the infusion and then seeing
how they do. The nursing home aspect of it is from yet another study where they're actually bringing the antibody out to various nursing homes if that nursing home has or looks like it's going to have an outbreak, say if there's one case of COVID. What they then do is they test the antibody in other residents and staff in the nursing home, either to treat any existing disease that they may have gotten from this emerging outbreak, or
even for its potential to prevent disease. That's called the prophylactic use of the ant body, is to use it as a preventive measure, not only to treat an existing infection. Eli Lily. As I said earlier, they're hoping they can get this emergency use authorization or at least try to go for it in November, but they're saying that they could already have a hundred thousand doses ready this month and as many as one million by the end of the year. So if they get that authorization, they're ready
to go right away. It's very similar to like the vaccine candidates that we're going through. Their producing the doses and having them ready just in case they get approved. And just to clarify ELI, Lily has already filed for an emergency use authorization with the f d A, and so it's possible that that decision could come relatively soon, and that would be for the single antibody, the main one that I've been talking about to treat these mild
to moderate cases. In addition to that they've been testing that the one antibody, they've been adding a second antibody, and so it's a two drug combination, and that's the
one they are expecting to apply for in November. But in either case, you're right, they are making the doses, and they have certain targets for what they can produce by the end of the year, and what they've produced already, it is likely that, you know, if they were to get a government authorization relatively soon, there would be I
think an imbalance in supply and demand. There would be a greater demand than doses available, and so I think there's going to be some work to do to figure out if there's certain types of patients that should be prioritized, and for instance, literally said today that it's possible that you could maybe reserved this initial supply of doses, maybe reserve them for people who are sixty five and older or who are overweight, because those are the groups that
seem like they are probably most at risk of worsening to severe disease if there's not this treatment that prevents that. But you know, if approved, this could kind of fill this gap until the vaccines do get authorized and pushed through as well. So just interesting stuff and hopefully they can work it out and hopefully it's safe and effective. Peter loftis healthcare reporter at the Wall Street Journal. Thank you very much for joining us my pleasure. I'm Astar
Ramirez and this has been reopening America. Don't forget effort today's big news stories. You can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast every money to Friday, So follow us on I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast