Supporting Science through COVID-19! 1st September 2020

Another week, another #SupportingScience round-up! At Baker, we continue to support science on a global scale. Let’s take a look at some of the key findings from the last couple of weeks…

1. Antibiotics & COVID-19

Although the majority of antibiotics will be unable to help the effects of COVID-19, a recent study has shown that the antibiotic, Azithromycin is currently being investigated as a potential treatment. According to the WHO, Azithromycin has anti-inflammatory effects that might help to reduce an overactive immune response to COVID-19. The drug has previously been effective in preventing severe bacterial respiratory tract infections in children with viral infections.

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2. Dynavax Investment

In order to scale up its production of its adjuvant for use in potential COVID-19 vaccines, Dynavax received an investment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

With the investment, Dynavax plans to establish the capacity to produce up to 750 million adjuvanted doses per year.

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3. COVID-19 Incubation Period

Currently, estimates of the incubation period for COVID-19 are around 4-5 days. However, NIH have now led a study that has allowed researchers to formulate a new and longer estimated incubation time. Using data from patients who contracted the virus in Wuhan, China, it has been discovered that the median incubation period for COVID-19 was actually 7.76 days.

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4. University of California

A team of scientists from the University of California, Riverside recently developed a machine learning drug discovery pipeline. This new discovery pipeline is a type of computational strategy linked to artificial intelligence and aims to hopefully identify hundreds of new potential drugs that could help treat COVID-19.

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5. Regeneron Pharmaceuticals

Having developed an antibody cocktail to fight COVID-19, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals aims to post their initial biomarker data from its clinical trials next month. Like other developers, Regeneron are also testing its product in the prevention against COVID-19. The prevention program will put Regeneron up against vaccines that may be more durable, however the company believe that there is a gap in the immunization market for its antibody cocktail.

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