(MedPageToday) Losing focus on monoclonals means neglecting those who need them most: the immunocompromised.
Hello, it’s Jeremy Faust, editor-in-chief of MedPage Today. Thanks for joining us.
Today, I’m going to cover an article I wrote in Inside Medicine called, “Data Snapshot: The rise and fall of monoclonal antibodies for COVID-19opens in a new tab or window.”
Six monoclonal antibodies that are specifically for COVID-19, and another monoclonal antibody that we already had on hand for other reasons, were authorized for emergency use by the FDA during the pandemic.
I just want to show this chart that shows the timeline because it’s very important to recognize that in 2020 we got two [monoclonal antibodies] that looked like they were promising. Then in 2021, there were four more added, of which tocilizumabopens in a new tab or window [Actemra] — the IL-6 (interleukin-6) modulator — was one that we already had in existence, but there was high-quality data showing that it helped patients. Then in 2022, just one came on.
But the important and very unfortunate thing here to watch is to realize that with the oncoming new variants, each of these monoclonals lost its activity. It lost its effectiveness against the variant, unlike the vaccines, which have done really well in holding up, but these monoclonals have not. So one by one, they have gone off of the market, their emergency use authorization revoked in time as they became thought to have no more use.