KARACHI: Scientists at the Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS) announced on Monday that they had prepared an immunoglobulin that can effectively help treat Covid-19 patients.

The treatment, they said, was “safe, low-risk and highly effective”.

“We have prepared an intravenous immunoglobulin with the help of plasma donated by recovered Covid-19 patients. The formulation has shown positive results in laboratory testing and trials on animals,” said Dr Shaukat Ali, the lead researcher and principal of the Dow College of Biotechnology.

The team would now share the data with the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan to get its approval for clinical trials, he added.

Sharing how the success was achieved, Dr Ali said the team collected blood samples from recovered Covid-19 patients, isolated antibodies, purified them and later concentrated them through a process, which removed the remaining unwanted materials from the final product.

It will share data with Drap to get its approval for clinical trials

On how this method was different from plasma therapy, Dr Ali said though it was also a type of passive immunisation like the plasma therapy, the method was considerably different as it used purified antibodies rather than the whole plasma.

“The treatment is considered safer and more effective than plasma transfusion as it does not carry the undesired blood components such as plasma protein and potential pathogens,” he said.

According to Dr Ali, this method of treatment is approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for normal conditions and such purified antibodies are commercially available globally against diseases such as tetanus, rabies, influenza and hepatitis.

The same strategy, he pointed out, had been effectively used in the viral epidemics such as the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome and Ebola.

“Plasma therapy, on the other hand, is only allowed in emergencies due to its side effects,” he said.

According to the researchers, while a number of biopharmaceutical companies in the world are engaged in this kind of work, DUHS’ work is the first global report of isolation, formulation and safety demonstration of immunoglobulin purified from recovered Covid-19 patients.

“In China, they purified antibodies from a pool of plasma donated by healthy individuals and successfully used them for Covid-19 patients. In our case, we obtained plasma from recovered coronavirus patients,” he explained.

Dr Ali said he hoped that this formulation would be very effective in treatment given the fact that it’s made from recovered Covid-19 patients and, second, it possessed the ability to fight against the specific strain prevalent in Pakistan.

The strain in Pakistan, he said, had few mutations, which the team observed when it carried out genome sequencing of the coronavirus.

Researchers said the formulation and its mass-scale production was very much viable since no “rare component” was used in its preparation.

They emphasised the need for creating awareness in the people so that more and more recovered Covid-19 patients would donate their plasma.

Other team members are: Dr Shobha Luxmi, Syed Muneebuddin, Mir Rashid Ali, Ayesha Ali, Mujtaba Khan, Fatima Anjum, Dr Sohaib Tauheed.

The team appreciated the support from DUHS Vice Chancellor Prof Saeed Quraishy.

Published in Dawn, April 14th, 2020