IIT Alumni Council advocates human- produced neutralizing antibodies as an immediate solution for saving lives in India while the world waits for appropriately scrutinized vaccines for Covid19
New Delhi: IIT Alumni Council suggests pursuance of human produced
neutralising antibodies (NAB) for Covid as a practical, safe and immediate option to
save lives and restore economic normalcy as herd immunity finally starts taking effect.
“Vaccine without standard clinical trials is not free from risks to human lives . By the
time a universally effective vaccine is ready to be manufactured consistently at scale
and distributed universally, the pandemic would have wrecked massive damage –
economic as well as to human lives. To save lives, an effective biologic humanproduced neutralizing antibodies is required as an immediate solution for saving lives”
said Ravi Sharma, President and Chief Volunteer of the IIT Alumni Council.
“Under the MegaTx initiative, the world’s largest plasma collection, processing and
hyperimmune injectable production capacity creation is already in process. A 360
degree solution comprising of universal longitudinal testing and antibody based
treatment of critical patients can save 50% of the lives which will otherwise be lost.
Vaccine will not cure critical patients” added spokesman for Project Platinae who has
conceived of the end to end technology stack for MegaTx.
“The only sure and immediate cure that seems to exist is a hyper immune neutralising
antibody extract harvested from a real human being. In time, infrastructure can be built
to genetically clone these effective antibodies in a high expression mammalian cell
line. Convalescent plasma therapy (CPT) is only an interim step towards administering
antibodies for three reasons – the donor may have other infections, the donor may not
have NABs even though he has antibodies and the donor may not have NAB in adequate
quantities. We have to produce hyperimmune immunoglobins – and that may be our
fastest life saver” said Dr Samir Kulkarni, Chairperson of the Research Centre for
Engineered Biomolecules, a MegaIncubator initiative.