Covid 19 coronavirus 'cure'? US biotech company claims it's found antibody to block virus

A California-based biotech company claims it has found an antibody that completely blocks the new coronavirus.

Sorrento Therapeutics said its STI-1499 antibody stopped Covid-19 from entering 100 per cent of healthy human cells in their experiments, Fox News reports.

The antibody is one of several the biotech company is planning to combine for a collaboration with Mt Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

Sorrento said in a press release it could produce up to 200,000 doses of the antibody in a month - a timeline that would see the drug available before a Covid-19 vaccine is expected to be out.

Sorrento has filed for emergency FDA approval in the US but is yet to receive green light from the agency.

Following the announcement, Sorrento's stocks shot up by nearly 220 per cent.

"We want to emphasise there is a cure,' Sorrento's CEO, Dr Henry Ji, told Fox News.

"There is a solution that works 100 per cent. If we have the neutralising antibody in your body, you don't need the social distancing. You can open up a society without fear."

The company has, however, only managed to test the antibody in lab tests on human cells so it cannot say it has blocked the infections in the human body.

The company claims the antibody blocks the virus from its primary doorway, a receptor on the surface of human cells: the ACE2 receptor.

"This puts its arms around the virus. It wraps around the virus and moves them out of the body," Ji told Fox.

"When the antibody prevents a virus from entering a human cell, the virus cannot survive.

"If they cannot get into the cell, they cannot replicate. So it means that if we prevent the virus from getting the cell, the virus eventually dies out. The body clears out that virus."

The STI-1499 is one of about a dozen antibodies the company says it has found to have some effect on the virus.

• Covid19.govt.nz: The Government's official Covid-19 advisory website