Some encouraging progress was made Thursday in the quest for a coronavirus treatment, but a cure or vaccine is still far away.<\/p>\n
Bay Area biotech companies received a boost thanks in part to some optimistic words from President Donald Trump about the fight against the virus.<\/p>\n
Clinical trials are already underway for many new therapies, Trump said.<\/p>\n
San Francisco biotech giant Genentech also talked progress and partnerships, announcing a phase-three trial with the FDA to see if one of its existing medicines can be used to combat the virus.<\/p>\n
We are starting a clinical trial with one of our medicines called Actemra to see if it might work against the coronavirus pneumonia, Dr. Levi Garraway, Chief Medical Officer for Genentech, said.<\/p>\n
Claes Gustafsson, co-founder of Newark-based ATUM, said their lab is busier than ever and has been working with other local labs to try to find a cure.<\/p>\n
Looking where we were, at least the projects Ive seen, and we look at, I don't know, at any given time maybe 20, 30 different projects, we certainly see that many of them have come a long, long way because of the amount of resources that are being pushed into making this happen, he said.<\/p>\n
One drug that came up in Trumps news conference is called Chloroquine, an anti-malarial drug that was briefly linked to a Stanford University researcher. Stanford told NBC Bay Area it was not part of a study involving that drug and denied the report or any link to the researcher.<\/p>\n
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Some Progress Made in Push to Find Coronavirus Treatment - NBC Bay Area<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Some encouraging progress was made Thursday in the quest for a coronavirus treatment, but a cure or vaccine is still far away. Bay Area biotech companies received a boost thanks in part to some optimistic words from President Donald Trump about the fight against the virus Continue reading