Jacob Glanville, Ph.D., a self-described “entrepreneur, inventor and computational immuno-engineer”1 featured in the Netflix docuseries “Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak,”2 claims to have developed a viable cure for COVID-19 that will soon undergo testing by the U.S. military.
Glanville, founding partner and CEO of a biotech company called Distributed Bio, and a group of employees began working on a treatment January 25, 2020. According to the company’s website:3
“Our strategy was to engineer a panel of anti-SARS antibodies to make them recognize and block the novel coronavirus. The result of that work is a panel of ultra-high affinity therapeutic antibodies to neutralize SARS-CoV-2 (the virus behind COVID-19).
The work leveraged both the Distributed Bio SuperHuman 2.0 human antibody discovery technology and the Tumbler computational antibody optimization technology to discover thousands of antibodies against a novel virus in 9 weeks.”
How the Antibody Treatment Works
In a March 31, 2020, interview, Glanville explained how his company came up with the treatment:4
” … My team has successfully taken five antibodies that back in 2002 were determined to bind and neutralize, block and stop the SARS virus … The new virus is a cousin of the old SARS.
So, what we’ve done is we’ve created hundreds of millions of versions of those antibodies, we’ve mutated them a bit, and in that pool of mutated versions, we found versions that cross them over … They bind on the same spot as the new virus, Covid-19.
It binds [to] the spot that the virus uses to gain entry into your cells. It blocks that. At this point we know it binds the same spot extremely tightly with high affinity. The next step is we send the antibodies to the military, and they will directly put those on the virus and show that it blocks its ability to infect cells.”
As reported by Fox News,5 the antibody therapy essentially circumvents the need for a vaccine. “Instead of giving you a vaccine and waiting for it to produce an immune response, we just give you those antibodies right away … so within about 20 minutes, that patient has the ability to neutralize the virus,” Glanville said.
According to Glanville, the completed drug will be tested for efficacy by the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), while the Charles River Laboratories will conduct safety testing.6
According to the New York Post,7 human trials may begin at the end of the summer. At best, the drug might be released in September for compassionate use, Glanville says, which means patients can get the drug outside a clinical trial. When asked about Glanville’s claims, Dr. Anthony Fauci replied that the use of monoclonal antibodies is “an old concept” and that pursuing it was “the right thing to do.”8
Malaria Drugs Show Promise Against COVID-19
Interestingly, chloroquine appears to improve zinc absorption, and this might be part of what makes it so useful against COVID-19. Evidence shows zinc gluconate and zinc acetate effectively reduce the severity and duration of viral infections. Zinc is crucial to the effectiveness of your immune system, enzyme function, protein synthesis and cell division.
Studies demonstrate using zinc lozenges reduces the duration of a cold by 33% and lessens the severity of your symptoms.16 Zinc has also been shown to inhibit coronavirus in vitro and block coronavirus replication in cell culture.17 As explained by Seheult in the MedCram video above:18
“When the coronavirus infects your cell, it’s going to dump into your cell a messenger RNA that’s going to be translated using ribosomes. Those ribosomes, the first thing they are going to do is translate that RNA molecule into a protein called RNA dependent RNA polymerase, or replicase.
And, it is this enzyme that is … inhibited by high intracellular concentrations of zinc. Well, as it turns out, chloroquine is a zinc ionophore, as is hydroxychloroquine. Zinc ionophore is just basically a protein or a gate that allows zinc to come into the cells.
We don’t know if that is the actual way it is working in this case, but it does seem to lend credence to the mechanism of action that zinc does inhibit replicase and that hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine increase the intracellular concentration of zinc.”
Your Immune System Is Your No. 1 Defense
As this story unfolds, I am committed to bringing you viable prevention and treatment options you can use at home. A recently published article19 by Mark McCarty and James DiNicolantonio, PharmD, highlight several nutraceuticals that may help reduce symptoms and severity of influenza and coronaviruses.20 According to the authors, these viruses:
“… cause an inflammatory storm in the lungs and it is this inflammatory storm that leads to acute respiratory distress, organ failure, and death. Certain nutraceuticals may help to reduce the inflammation in the lungs from RNA viruses and others may also help boost type 1 interferon response to these viruses, which is the body’s primary way to help create antiviral antibodies to fight off viral infections.”
From the conclusions of several randomized clinical studies, DiNicolantonio and McCarty believe the antiviral effects of some nutraceuticals are quite clear, and hope these benefits will encourage further research to test this strategy. I’ve summarized these nutraceuticals in “Essential Nutrition to Protect Yourself From Coronavirus.” Additional suggestions can be found in “Quercetin and Vitamin D — Allies Against Coronavirus?”
Also remember to care for your gut microbiome, reduce your sugar and carbohydrate intake, get quality sleep and practice good hand-washing to support your efforts to stay well.
Stay away from others when you are sick to avoid spreading any virus you may be carrying, and to seek medical attention as you would if you were sick with a bad flu. Difficulty breathing is a clear indicator that medical attention may be required. This is particularly true if you are pregnant, have a weakened immune system or a chronic medical condition that may place you in a higher risk category for severe COVID-19 infection.21
Sources and References
- 1 Distributed Bio Jacob Glanville
- 2 New York Post January 23, 2020
- 3 Distributed Bio, Our Race for a COVID-19 Therapeutic
- 4 RNZ March 31, 2020
- 5, 6 Fox News March 19, 2020
- 7 New York Post April 1, 2020
- 8 Yahoo! April 1, 2020
- 9 Food and Drug Administration, March 19, 2020 Para 7
- 10 Cell Research, 2020;30:269 Abstract
- 11 Clinical Infectious Diseases, 2020; doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciaa237 Abstract
- 12 Mediterranee Infection, March 2020; 10.1016/j.ijantimicag.2020.105949 Abstract
- 13 Google Docs, Dr. Vladimir Zelenko March 23, 2020 Correspondence
- 14 The Cleveland Clinic, Long Q-T Syndrome (LQTS) What are the symptoms of long QT syndrome?
- 15 Fortune, March 20, 2020 Closely Watched Para 1, 2, 4
- 16 JRSM Open, 2017;8(5):20542704 Abstract/Results
- 17 PLOS Pathogens November 4, 2010 DOI: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1001176
- 18 YouTube, MedCam Coronavirus Pandemic Update 39 Minute 5:20
- 19 Progress in Cardiovascular Disease, February 12, 2020
- 20 EurekAlert! February 24, 2020 Para 1 & 4
- 21 Mayo Clinic, Flu Symptoms: Should I See My Doctor?
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