This mainly in reference to Eli Lilly's monoclonal antibody treatment for COVID-19.
https://investor.lilly.com/news-releases/news-release-details/lilly-announces-proof-concept-data-neutralizing-antibody-ly
The dose is 2.8 grams and I'm wondering what the production costs of that might be
There are many cost subheads that contribute to unit cost of a pharmaceutical product. Costs might also vary from company to company by reason of final purity and aesthetics. But, do you sincerely think companies will reveal the true manufacturing cost of an item like this? Take a look at this:Article The economic potential of plant-made pharmaceuticals in the ...
There are a number of companies that specialize on GMP antibody production services for pharmaceutical companies. See this list https://www.antibodyresource.com/site/show/gmp-antibody-suppliers. Their quotes would be the most reliable source for an estimate of the cost - however, that would strongly depend on your starting point, endpoint and production scale.
The cost or prices the Monoclonal as well as polyclonal Abs depend on quality and purity as well as its sources . Theses serological products are varying from country to other according type of company .
The same calculation comes to mind when thinking about mAb treatment for Alzheimer's and how you would scale production in a manner that is affordable. One of the issues with the systemic admin of mAbs for CoV2 is that while it helps with clearance of virus it does not cross the blood-lung barrier and you still see pathology in the lung which could lead to longer term secondary outcomes or susceptibility to future inflammatory insults. Ideally, you would want a co-treatment with an inhaled product, such as a nanobody, to directly protect the respiratory system. This may be less of a benefit in a progressive case than an early case or in a prophylactic setting.
We have developed a class of nanobodies which target the RBD of SARS-CoV-2, as have others, and they effective neutralize the virus in-vitro. We are working on animal efficacy studies at the moment.
To answer your question from a lab-scale perspective, we can produce about 2 grams of nanobody in a week from 30-liters of bacterial culture. I don't know what the yield is for Lilly's lead in cell culture, but I think one can safely extrapolate that they do not have the biologics production capability to produce a sufficient yield in the short term for large scale distribution. Will be interesting to follow the story.