When I read back in mid-March that the biotech firm Regeneron had isolated “hundreds of neutralizing antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 virus,” I thought it sounded crazy. Antibodies, after all, are the immune system’s hound dogs, trained to recognize and attack any viral or microbial invader.
Even though the roughly 30-year-old company has previously developed a three-antibody drug to treat Ebola, I couldn’t understand how so many potential treatments could be isolated in a matter of weeks by a single entity. So I hopped on the phone March 23 with George Yancopoulos, the company’s co-founder, president and chief scientific officer. He spoke from his car, and I hoped he was driving slower than he talked. This conversation has been lightly edited for brevity.
