Single-dose treatment with a humanized neutralizing antibody affords full protection of a human transgenic mouse model from lethal Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)-coronavirus infection

“…Therapeutic efficacy of LCA60 was not assessed in the marmoset model here due to the moderate clinical benefit observed upon prophylactic treatment, but has been shown in a mouse model of MERS-CoV infection (Corti et al, 2015). However, therapeutic efficacy of several MERS-CoV neutralizing antibodies has been shown in mouse models (Agrawal et al, 2016;Corti et al, 2015;Li et al, 2015;Pascal et al, 2015;Qiu et al, 2016;Zhao et al, 2018), but so far the clinical benefit in nonhuman primate studies has been modest (Chen et al, 2017;de Wit et al, 2018;van Doremalen et al, 2017). Thus, LCA60 would likely be more efficacious as a therapeutic treatment in combination with other MERS-CoV-neutralizing antibodies or other antiviral treatments such as ribavirin, IFN and lopinavir that have shown therapeutic efficacy in nonhuman primates (Chan et al, 2015;Falzarano et al, 2013).…”