The state-funded Tuscan anti-Covid super antibodies will arrive in March. The announcement of Rappuoli (Tls)

What announced Rino Rappuoli, Chief Scientist and Head External R&D of GSK Vaccines in Siena and head of the ERC Advanced Grant OMVac project of the Tls foundation which will be funded by the government

Elsewhere it would be better known and listened to than the American virologist Antony Fauci , who by now does not exist on this earth who has not heard of him at least once. Because, despite his low profile, Rino Rappuoli is definitely the man of the moment. Compared to many of his colleagues, however, he disdains television appearances (exceptional, in fact, his brief appearance in Fabio Fazio's Che tempo che fa ), but this does not mean that the government is not betting on his work. The executive has in fact decided to finance the non-profit Toscana life sciences-Tls for its research on monoclonal antibodies. Fifty million euros now, 380 in all in favor of the search for an alternative solution to the Oxford vaccine. And a cure – said Rappuoli – could now be around the corner. All Italian. But (almost) nobody talks about it. "Siena will take us out of the Coronavirus," former premier Matteo Renzi recently said, praising the work of the Tls foundation.

SUPER ANTIBODIES IN GOOD POINT?

Not a vain hope, that of the government, which meanwhile has sent on Invitalia controlled by the Mef and led by the CEO, Domenico Arcuri, to support the realities that have flourished in Siena. The results may not be late, as Rappuoli told Rai 3: "Our work plan is to start clinical trials before Christmas, finish them in February and March, have the drug available, the first tens of thousands of doses and then have it more and more. I hope that between vaccines and monoclonal antibodies the Christmas present for 2021 is that we have forgotten this pandemic ».

WHAT ARE MONOCLONAL ANTIBODIES FOR?

"The monoclonal antibody – Rappuoli always said – has two uses: one for healthy people, they are given an antibody today and from tomorrow they are protected from infection and are immune for 6 months, the other to heal the infection already in progress, "explained the doctor on television. But what are monoclonal antibodies? "They are natural substances present in the blood of people who recover from the virus and which allow these people to heal: from the blood of patients healed at Spallanzani in Rome and Siena we isolated cells that produce these natural defenses and we brought them to the laboratory by choosing the super -powerful and expanding them on an industrial level to then be able to inject them on the sick ».

SIX MONTHS OF IMMUNITY

"We and other laboratories in the world – explained Rappuoli , scientific director of the vaccines division Gsk (Glaxosmithkline) of Rosia in Siena – we started to develop monoclonal antibodies: with an injection of these, a person is immune for six months". In short, a temporary immunity, as indeed that of the vaccine will be temporary (in fact, it seems that our antibodies do not keep long memories of information on Covid, just like all the other viruses of the Coronavirus family, to which the simple cold also belongs), but a few calls should be enough to eradicate the threat from the planet, with a blanket vaccination that will have no precedent in the history of medicine.

THE TUSCAN DRUG ROADMAP

"In March we will have the first tens of thousands of doses available," said Rappuoli , who specified: "I don't know if it will arrive in pharmacies: we work with the public sector, the public sector will decide how to distribute it". The antibody chosen among the 3 best selected in July in a sample of over 4 thousand extracted from the blood of patients recovered from Coronavirus is called MAD0004J08. Some time ago a note from Toscana Life Sciences had explained that: “It will be tested in clinical trials whose start is expected by the end of 2020”. A decision that arose "from the current phase of development and production of the three best antibodies and which evaluates both the ability of the antibody to bind the spike protein and inactivate the virus, and the yield from the point of view of development and production of the therapy against coronavirus Sars-Cov-2 (MAbCo19 Project) ".

WHO IS RINO RAPPUOLI

Discoverer of the vaccine against meningococcus B and C and that against pertussis, Rino Rappuoli probably won't say much to the general public ( we wrote about it here ), because he has always preferred laboratory slides to international showcases, but he is one of the most cited microbiologists in textbooks and scientific research around the world. In short, a real luminary. In the midst of the H1N1 virus pandemic he wrote the book "Vaccines of the global era".

THE FIGHT AGAINST COVID

To support vaccinations in poor, resource-poor countries, he founded the Novartis Vaccines Institute for Global Health, a non-profit organization that develops vaccines for developing countries. But now he is the man at the front in the war against Covid-19: "We are among the first groups in the world to have arrived at this point, and we have an antibody 90% more powerful than those identified by other researchers", he recently declared Rino Rappuoli to Repubblica . Anyone wishing to know more about study treatment and is not afraid of English can learn more by watching this video .

WHAT GSK AND TLS DO

«It is very interesting what is being done here – Rino Rappuoli told the newspaper directed by Maurizio Molinari in recent days – we have about ten people, including newly graduated students, who are doing competitive things with the best research groups in the world. We show that even in Italy certain objectives can be achieved, that our young people do not have to go out to assert themselves and are indeed forced to go back if they are abroad ». Gsk Italia, with 1.8 billion euros in turnover, continues to grow and represent a world reference point. Only last year GSK had decided to bet on the Italian branch (which alone in 2018 distributed 47 million doses of vaccines, exported to 54 countries), perhaps thanks to the presence of Rappuoli , writing a check for 40 million euro and inaugurating a new structure of 8,700 square meters, equipped with 500 workstations (of which 300 in the laboratory) for the clinical development of vaccines and their distribution.

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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/i-super-anticorpi-toscani-anti-covid-finanziati-dallo-stato-arriveranno-a-marzo-lannuncio-di-rappuoli-tls/ on Mon, 26 Oct 2020 14:40:37 +0000.