Covid-19 roundup: Eli Lil­ly retro­fits RVs for first-of-its-kind an­ti­body tri­al with NIH; Am­gen, Ab­b­Vie, Take­da team on a drug

Eli Lil­ly and the NIH are about to start a first-of-its-kind tri­al that re­searchers and de­vel­op­ers have talked about for months as a way of pro­vid­ing tem­po­rary im­mu­ni­ty to the most at-risk pop­u­la­tions.

Lil­ly an­nounced this morn­ing that it will start a 2,400-per­son tri­al with the Na­tion­al In­sti­tute for Al­ler­gy and In­fec­tious Dis­eases to test whether its ex­per­i­men­tal Covid-19 neu­tral­iz­ing an­ti­body can pre­vent peo­ple in nurs­ing homes and as­sist­ed liv­ing fa­cil­i­ties from de­vel­op­ing the dis­ease. The idea, known as pas­sive im­mu­ni­ty, is that rather than wait­ing on a vac­cine to in­duce peo­ple to de­vel­op an­ti­bod­ies, doc­tors can give them lab-grown an­ti­bod­ies. Ide­al­ly, those an­ti­bod­ies will ei­ther at­tack the new SARS-CoV-2 in­fec­tion, if the pa­tient has re­cent­ly been ex­posed, or per­sist in the blood for sev­er­al weeks and pre­vent in­fec­tion or dis­ease for that pe­ri­od.

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