New study to create coronavirus therapy

Huntsville Hospital and Hudson Alpha are doing a new study to create a therapy for the virus

To open their doors.

New at ten -- as certain parts of alabama's economy prepare to restart -- here locally, work is under way to treat those infected with coronavirus.

Waay 31's will robinson-smith is live outside of huntsville hospital.

He learned more about a new study the hospital is doing with hudson alpha to create a therapy for the virus.

Researchers i spoke with say that even though finding a vaccine may be a year or more away, they are optimistic they will have a way to effectively treat this coronavirus much sooner.

Dr. jian han, founder, irepertoire we are much closer than a vaccine.

We are talking about months, rather than years, even weeks that we can have these antibodies in hand.

Doctor jian han is the founder and chief scientific officer for irepertoire.

It's a company on the hudson alpha campus specializing in immune sequencing technologies.

They're partnering with huntsville hospital to discover how our immune systems fight the virus, and then use that information to develop a treatment the process involves testing the blood of people with coronavirus about seven days after their diagnosis and then again in a couple of weeks.

Dr. jian han, founder, irepertoire at that time, we can get a single cell to study which cell is making the antibody and that way we can harvest the success that makes the patients recover from the infection.

Over the next couple of months, huntsville hospital will help recruit the roughly 15-30 patients for the trial and take the blood samples as well.

Dr. ali hassoun, infectious disease specialist, huntsville hospital if they have any specific positive findings, then we'll move forward more, and of course hudson alpha, in deciding what's the next step.

Dr. han says because other labs working toward the same goal, there will likely be multiple ways to fight coronavirus.

Dr. jian han, founder, irepertoire there are other companies that that we know, chinese, japanese, european companies, working with a similar approach.

So i think that fighting covid-19 may be, before a vaccine becomes available, there are going to be different options to treating the disease.

And dr. hassoun here at huntsville hospital says at each stage of this research, they will be publishing part of their findings.

He and others say its crucial that research groups share what they discover with not only other states, but countries as well.

Reporting live in huntsville, will robinson-smith, waay 31 news.