Sunday's "60 Minutes" set to rebroadcast segment on VUMC research on COVID antibodies

On Sunday, Sept. 5, CBS News “60 Minutes” is scheduled to rebroadcast a segment featuring James Crowe Jr., MD, whose team at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) is trying to ensure that COVID-19 will be “The Last Pandemic.”

Last month AstraZeneca announced a long-acting monoclonal antibody combination discovered by Crowe’s lab and optimized by the company prevented COVID-19 in a study of immunocompromised and chronically ill adults.

“This single-shot prevention is likely to be a game changer for at-risk patients” who may not be able to mount an effective immune response against the COVID-19 virus after vaccination, said Crowe, director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center.

The “60 Minutes” segment, previously broadcast last April, describes how Crowe’s team isolated antibodies from COVID-19 survivors and, by transcribing the genetic codes of the antibodies, produced—in a record 25 days--monoclonal antibodies that neutralized the virus in laboratory tests.

“The antibody, like a heat-seeking missile, floats around in the animal, finds the virus, latches onto the virus and inactivates,” Crowe told “60 Minutes.”

“After we had done that, we realized, ‘Wow, your body is a library of everything you've ever seen.’” He continued. “Then we started thinking, as medical researchers, we could find the cure to virtually anything that had ever occurred on the planet.”

Recently in the first episode of the second season of VUMC’s original podcast series, Vanderbilt Health DNA: Discoveries in Action, Crowe described a research initiative focused on generating neutralizing antibodies for the 100 most likely causes of epidemics. It’s called AHEAD100, for Advanced Human Epidemic Antibody Defenses.

“We're really looking ahead to develop the prevention for the potential epidemics in the future,” explained Crowe, the Ann Scott Carell Chair and professor of Pediatrics and Pathology, Microbiology & Immunology at VUMC. “We would like to have antibody drugs that could be shipped anywhere in the world on a moment's notice.

“We've already made best-in-class antibodies that could be used to prevent or treat 30 or 40 of these diseases,” he said. “We have them in the lab, but they're not being manufactured because we just lack the money.”

It will cost an estimated $25 million to $30 million per virus to develop and clinically test the antibodies, and to manufacture 10,000-dose stockpiles, Crowe said. That comes to $2.5 billion to $3 billion for 100 viruses—still a fraction of the estimated $10 trillion spent globally so far on COVID-19.

Crowe said a non-profit organization, Connected DMV, raised about $2.5 million for the six-month planning phase of the initiative, which ended this summer.

On Aug. 11, the Global Pandemic Prevention and Biodefense Center, which will coordinate the AHEAD100 program, launched. VUMC is a participating affiliate in the center. The goal now is to find governmental and/or philanthropic partners to move the initiative forward.

“We learned a lot in this pandemic and we have lots of successes,” Crowe said. “What we need to do now is string them together into an end-to-end solution where as soon as something happens, the cure or the prevention can be delivered to that small population, that local outbreak, no matter where it is in the world.”