Beijing (AFP)

A hundred laboratories worldwide are competing to produce a vaccine against the new coronavirus, but in China researchers claim to have already developed a treatment capable of stopping the epidemic.

A drug in the testing phase at the prestigious Peking University ("Beida") would not only accelerate the healing of patients, but also temporarily immunize against Covid-19.

In an interview with AFP, Sunney Xie, director of the Beida Center for Advanced Genomic Innovation, explains that the treatment works in mice.

His laboratory collected antibodies from 60 patients cured of the disease before injecting them into rodents.

"After five days, their viral load had been divided by 2,500," he said. "It means that this potential drug has a therapeutic effect."

A study on this research was published Sunday in the specialized journal "Cell". The study sees it as a potential "cure" for the disease and notes that it helps speed healing.

"We are experts in single cell sequencing, not immunologists or virologists," said Professor Xie. "When we found that our approach found an antibody that neutralized (the virus), we were overjoyed."

According to him, the treatment could be available before the end of the year, in time in the event of a new winter offensive of the Covid-19 which, arising in China at the end of last year, has already contaminated 4.5 million people around the world, including more than 316,000 fatally.

"The preparation of clinical trials is underway," added the researcher, adding that they will take place in Australia and other countries. With the recession of the epidemic in China, the Asian giant does not have enough carriers of the virus to carry out tests on humans.

"What we hope is that these antibodies will become a special drug that will stop the pandemic," he said.

- Momentary immunity -

If more than a hundred laboratories worldwide have started researching a vaccine, it may not be available for another 12 to 18 months, the World Health Organization warned.

Antibody-based treatment could therefore be quicker to spread to the population.

In China, more than 700 patients have already received plasma (a constituent of the blood) from cured patients, a technique that has produced "very good effects", according to health authorities.

But the amount of plasma available "is limited," notes Professor Xie. While the 14 antibodies used in his research could be quickly reproduced on a large scale, he said.

This approach has already been successfully adopted to combat other viruses, such as HIV, Ebola and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (Seas).

A treatment for Ebola, remdesivir, has given good results in the United States against Covid-19, accelerating the healing of patients, but without significantly reducing the mortality rate.

According to Professor Xie, the treatment developed in Beijing could offer him temporary immunity to the virus.

The study shows that if you inject antibodies into a mouse before you give it the virus, it stays safe from infection.

This would protect caregivers for a few weeks, even a few months, hopes the Chinese specialist.

"We could stop the pandemic with a treatment that works, even without a vaccine," he hopes.

© 2020 AFP