Dr. George Yancopoulos, founding scientist, president and chief scientific officer of Regeneron, said that it wouldn’t be appropriate to comment on when the White House got in touch to ask for the experimental Covid-19 treatment President Trump received.
Yancopoulos said on CNN on Monday that as physician scientists, they respect patient privacy and in doing so, leave questions like this to the patient and their direct physicians.
“It’s not appropriate for us to be commenting on things like that,” Yancopoulos said.
When asked if they had heard from the President’s team over the weekend, Yancopoulos said they hear the same thing about the President as everyone else.
“What we hear is very much, I think, what you’ve been hearing,” Yancopoulos said. “That he’s been doing exceedingly well, and that they’re very optimistic.”
Remember: The White House confirmed doctors gave President Trump a single 8-gram dose of Regeneron’s experimental antibody therapy to treat Covid-19.
Regeneron, a New York-based biotech company, confirmed that it provided the drug in what’s commonly known as a “compassionate use” request from the President’s physicians.
The therapy is known as REGN-COV2; the company calls it a “cocktail” of two monoclonal antibodies.
Polyclonal antibodies are made using several different immune cells, while monoclonal antibodies are made using identical immune cells that are clones of a specific parent cell.
To make its monoclonal antibody therapy, Regeneron scientists selected two antibodies that best neutralized a version of the novel coronavirus in the lab. They then cloned these antibodies and put it into a treatment. Regeneron is using two antibodies since they think it will work best as the virus mutates.
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