On September 16, American pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly presented the initial results of a clinical trial that used monoclonal antibodies in patients infected with the novel coronavirus. The tested compound, LY-CoV555, contains antibodies against the virus, obtained in a laboratory from cloned lymphocytes that originally came from a cured COVID-19 patient. The researchers studied Ly-CoV555 in 452 volunteers with mild and moderate symptoms. Of the 302 people who received the drug, five (1.7%) required hospitalization, a figure that was 2.5 times higher among the 150 participants in the placebo group, from which 6% needed to be hospitalized. These are the first published data on the use of monoclonal antibodies against COVID-19. However, further testing is needed to determine whether the treatment is effective.
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