AstraZeneca’s Antibody Therapy Slashes Rates of Severe COVID-19

AstraZeneca has announced that its COVID-19 long-acting antibody (LAAB) combination, AZD7442, significantly reduced severity of COVID-19 as well as death in a phase 3 trial.

This, just one week after the company filed for an FDA Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the antibody cocktail as a preventive for symptomatic COVID-19.

The intramuscular injection could become the first LAAB product to receive an EUA for the prevention of COVID-19. And AstraZeneca is close to advancing it as a treatment as well.

In the study, a 600-mg dose of AZD7442 — a combination of the antibodies tixagevimab and cilgavimab — was shown to reduce the risk of developing severe COVID-19 or death by 50 percent compared to placebo in outpatients who had been symptomatic for seven days or less.