– We are the first in the world to have a drug for COVID-19. The medicine, containing antibodies neutralizing the coronavirus, actually works – says doctor Grzegorz Czelej, Senator and one of the project initiators, who presented the medicine at a press conference in Lublin.
The anti-SARS-CoV-2 immunoglobulin will now go through quality tests, including product stability tests, and will be submitted to clinical trials in four centers: Lublin, Bytom, Białystok and Warsaw.
– In the clinical trials we administer the medicine to SARS-CoV-2 infected patients. Obviously, we choose patients with symptomatic infection at the appropriate stage of clinical symptoms so that we can prove that administration of the medicine makes the symptoms disappear. We have to prove the efficacy and safety of the drug – explains professor Krzysztof Tomasiewicz, Head of the Infectious Diseases Clinic in Lublin.
Lublin-based Biomed has already gone through the most difficult stage. It has produced over three thousand ampoules of anti-SARS-CoV-2 immunoglobulin, which is slightly more than initially expected.
– We owe it mainly to all miners, whom I would like to thank very much. Because it is from their plasma that the medicine is produced. Let me remind you that out of the 150 liters of collected plasma, more than 100 liters came from convalescent miners from Jastrzębska Spółka Węglowa, who donated their plasma, emphasized doctor Grzegorz Czelej. – We concluded with Biomed that the medicine will be our natural treasure, because it has been developed from the blood of our citizens. I would like the name of the medicine to be selected in a competition open to everybody. We look forward to everybody’s proposals, concluded the senator.
