The drug, made by the biotech company Regeneron, is the second antibody treatment to win emergency use approval from the FDA.
A World Health Organization (WHO) panel on Friday recommended the use of Regeneron and Roche’s COVID-19 antibody cocktail for patients at high risk of hospitalisations and those severely ill with no natural antibodies.
The treatment has been granted U.S. emergency use authorisation, having gained attention when used to treat former President Donald Trump’s COVID-19 illness last year. Europe is studying the therapy, while Britain approved it last month.
While acknowledging costs associated with the treatment, the WHO panel said that given the recorded benefits of the therapy, “the recommendations should provide a stimulus to engage all possible mechanisms to improve global access to the intervention and associated testing.”
George D. Yancopoulos, Co-Founder, President and Chief Scientific Officer of Regeneron Pharmaceutical, is the Greek American biomedical scientist behind Donald Trump’s COVID-19 antibody cocktail.
Yancopoulos, the son of Greek immigrants and a life-long New Yorker, attended New York City public schools and graduated as valedictorian of the Bronx High School of Science, where he was a top winner of the nation’s premier high school science competition, then known as the Westinghouse Science Talent Search.
