Nearly all of the monoclonal antibodies used to prevent severe disease fail to stand up to the new variant, laboratory assays show.
Doctors use artificial versions of natural antibodies to stave off severe COVID-19 in high-risk people who are infected with the coronavirus. But a slew of publications posted on preprint servers report laboratory evidence thatis totally or partially resistant to all currently available treatments based on these monoclonal antibodies.
The preprints report that only two antibodies show strong evidence of retaining some ability to thwart the variant: sotrovimab, developed by Vir Biotechnology in San Francisco, California, and GSK, headquartered in London; and DXP-604, which is undergoing clinical trials in China and was developed by BeiGene and Singlomics, both based in Beijing.
These findings are already affecting health-care policy. US health officials have said they will ration sotrovimab, allotting it to states on the basis of numbers of infections and hospitalizations and the prevalence of Omicron.
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