
A human monoclonal antibody blocking SARS-CoV-2 infection - JanSt
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.11.987958v1.full
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m0zg
"Monoclonal antibody" automatically means $50-150K per course of treatment
pretty much. And while that price does not reflect the actual cost of just
producing the drug, these drugs are legit expensive to produce as well, just
not to such an extent.

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hcknwscommenter
The average annual cost of 1 year of mAb treatment is about 100K [1], which
jibes with your estimate. However, that is one year of treatment. Fully human
mAbs have a pretty long serum half-life. COVID-19 should clear from 1 or 2
administrations, not the 12-24 per year typically seen with other mAbs. [1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29461857](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29461857)

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m0zg
Be that as it may, it's still way too expensive to be of use when treating
millions of patients, even if the necessary quantities could be quickly
produced, which they can not.

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hcknwscommenter
~10K for an effective single-dose treatment is not that expensive. Admittedly
this is a very crude calculation, but it's probably not too far off. Moreover,
mAb production is a very mature technology, that can be scaled up by just
growing more cells. I'm not saying we are close to getting this into the
clinic, but it is a very interesting result.

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m0zg
Across 100M people that's a cool trillion dollars.

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newsbinator
True, but even if we're only talking dollars, we'd have to compare that
trillion to the economic amount lost by _not_ inoculating.

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imtringued
There would be a lot of dead people but the economic impact of those deaths
would be pretty insignificant because highest fatality rate is for people in
their 80s.

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op00to
I think you underestimate the psycho-social effects of having millions of
deaths.

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drenginian
So many disclaimers at the top of this about the validity of the information.

