Add Take­da and Al­ny­lam to the menu of glob­al drug­mak­ers look­ing to stymie the coro­n­avirus epi­dem­ic

As the WHO de­clares that the glob­al mor­tal­i­ty rate of the in­fec­tions caused by the new coro­n­avirus stands at 3.4%, Take­da and Al­ny­lam have joined the ranks of drug­mak­ers work­ing on an an­ti­dote.

Take­da is look­ing to de­vel­op a plas­ma-de­rived ther­a­py — which it says has been shown to be ef­fec­tive in treat­ing se­vere acute vi­ral res­pi­ra­to­ry in­fec­tions — for in­di­vid­u­als at high risk of con­tract­ing Covid-19.

Julie Kim

The ther­a­py, which is be­ing re­ferred to as TAK-888, will be de­rived from the blood of coro­n­avirus pa­tients who have re­cov­ered from the res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­ease — us­ing the ra­tio­nale that an­ti­bod­ies cul­ti­vat­ed by re­cov­ered pa­tients should arm the im­mune sys­tems of new pa­tients with fresh am­mu­ni­tion to de­stroy the in­fec­tion.

“What we are try­ing to de­vel­op here … will not pre­vent the dis­ease, but hope­ful­ly we’ll be able to treat se­vere pa­tients who are suf­fer­ing from Covid-19, and po­ten­tial­ly pro­vide some pro­tec­tion to front­line health­care work­ers,” Julie Kim, head of Take­da’s plas­ma-de­rived ther­a­pies busi­ness unit, told End­points News. “It’ll be great once the vac­cine is avail­able, then you can ac­tu­al­ly pre­vent the dis­ease.”

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