Formerhuman
Established Member (Voting Rights)
At the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the neuroscientist and long COVID expert David Putrino is collecting blood samples from some of the patients who responded well to Vyvgart. He hopes the samples could enable better immune phenotyping so clinicians can predict whether a person with long COVID might respond to Vyvgart or similar drugs.
The sampling builds on work that a research team including Putrino and Yale University’s Akiko Iwasaki published in Cell in May showing that mice that were given immunoglobulin G (IgG) from the blood of humans with long COVID went on to develop neurological symptoms. Specifically, the experiment showed a causal link between those symptoms and autoantibodies, such as the long COVID patients’ IgG, in the blood—the same autoantibodies that FcRn inhibitors like Vyvgart are designed to disrupt.
“We have expressed that we’re interested in FcRn inhibitors as a treatment option for a subset of folks with long COVID for quite some time,” Putrino says. By July, Putrino had collected blood samples from about 15 people. Beginning a clinical trial this year is a major goal, pending funding.
open access
cen.acs.org
The sampling builds on work that a research team including Putrino and Yale University’s Akiko Iwasaki published in Cell in May showing that mice that were given immunoglobulin G (IgG) from the blood of humans with long COVID went on to develop neurological symptoms. Specifically, the experiment showed a causal link between those symptoms and autoantibodies, such as the long COVID patients’ IgG, in the blood—the same autoantibodies that FcRn inhibitors like Vyvgart are designed to disrupt.
“We have expressed that we’re interested in FcRn inhibitors as a treatment option for a subset of folks with long COVID for quite some time,” Putrino says. By July, Putrino had collected blood samples from about 15 people. Beginning a clinical trial this year is a major goal, pending funding.
open access
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