Coronavirus patients to be treated with horse antibodies in experimental trial

Researchers in Costa Rica are set to treat Covid-19 patients with antibodies taken from horses in an experimental trial that aims to reduce the severity of the disease.

The equine antibodies medication, developed by University of Costa Rica’s Clodomiro Picado Institute (ICP), is to be tested on 26 patients from mid-September, Roman Macaya, president of the Social Security Fund that manages public health centres, told Reuters.

If results from the study are encouraging, Costa Rican authorities hope to roll out the treatment more widely in hospitals.

“We are proud to know that this product will save lives until the vaccine reaches the population,” said Alberto Alape, a project coordinator at ICP.

“We do it with our resources, without having to stand in line or compete against other countries, as can be seen with possible vaccines.”

The antibodies were drawn from horses that had been infected with Sars-Cov-2, the virus that cause Covid-19, researchers said.

They imported the virus protein from China and the UK and injected it into six of the 110 horses that the IPC uses for testing.

Weeks later, when the animals developed enough antibodies, they extracted blood and used the antibodies from the plasma as raw material for the injectable serum that would be applied to human patients.

The Costa Rican said their treatment is based on the experience of using horse antibodies to develop snake anti-venoms.

If it works, the researchers say they want to share the inexpensive treatment with other Central American nations, which are mostly poorer than Costa Rica.

“In addition to the principle of solidarity and the fact that this has been done with anti-venom for snakebites, we know that in a pandemic, one’s own well-being is related to the well-being of neighbours,” Mr Alape said.

Similar treatments are being developed using the antibodies generated from the immune responses of camels, llamas and alpacas.

Last week, researchers in Sweden announced they had identified a small neutralising antibody - a so-called ‘nanobody’ - that has the capacity to block Sars-Cov-2 from entering human cells.

The nanobody was taken from a 12-year-old alpaca, named Tyson, which was injected with virus protein by scientists at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

The research team has completed the study and reported the findings which they hope will lead to pre-clinical animal studies, before eventually being used as an effective antiviral treatment against Covid-19.

Additional reporting by Reuters