Ronapreve. The Authorised Covid 19 Treatment Book.

PLEASE NOTE. THIS IS A BOOK. NOT THE ACTUAL MEDICATION. Ronapreve is a monoclonal antibody treatment to prevent and treat COVID-19 developed by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Roche Pharmaceuticals. The drug contains a pair of antibodies created in a laboratory, and has been shown to lower hospitalisation or mortality from COVID by 70%, as well as shortening the duration of symptoms by four days. It can be administered either through injection or infusion. On 20 August 2021, it was approved by the United Kingdom’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency for use in the UK. The treatment contains two mAbs: casirivimab and imdevimab. They are designed to stop the coronavirus attaching to ACE2, a receptor found on the surface of human cells in the respiratory tract. The virus binds to the receptor to get inside the cell, where it can replicate before going on to infect other cells. One of the mAbs is derived from a COVID-fighting immune cell taken from a human survivor of the disease. The other was produced in a mouse genetically modified to have a human immune system. The advantage of combining the two is that they target two different parts of the spike protein, many of which protrude from the coronavirus - these are what it uses to bind with ACE2. Using both reduces the chance of the virus escaping from the immune system. The effect of the treatment is to boost a person’s immunity, allowing their immune response to clear the virus so they can recover from the infection. In this respect, it works similarly to convalescent plasma therapy, in which antibodies from people who have recovered from a disease are taken from their blood and given to other people to boost their ability to fight off the illness. The advantage with mAbs, though, is that they are all identical, and so only bind to the coronavirus itself. They therefore have less chance of causing side-effects than blood plasma, which contains a mixture of antibodies that may bind to (and damage) other cells inside the body.