There are hopes for humans during the COVID-19 crisis - and it could be due to hamsters.
The US Food and Drug Administration has fast-tracked a biotechnology group's antibody treatment on COVID-19-infected humans.
Distributed Bio, a computational immunoengineering biotechnology group, has shown promising results for a COVID-19 treatment on hamsters and is due to begin tests on humans next February.
After that, the medicine could be available globally by May 2021.
Distributed Bio CEO Dr Jacob Glanville tells The Project antibodies protect the hamsters completely from being infected from the COVID-19-causing virus.
"For hamsters who are already infected, if you give them our antibody, their lungs resolve a bunch of damage in 48 hours and they have a 98 percent reduction in virus," he says.
"So it looks like a very proper medicine in hamsters and we're hoping to see the same thing in humans."
Dr Glanville says they can see a positive result in hamsters if they gain weight.
"One of the things you look for in a sick hamster is they hide in a corner and they stop eating so you notice that their weight deteriorates - and that's typical of COVID-19 in hamsters," he tells The Project.
"The ones that got our shot just kept getting fatter and fatter."
At this point, the antibodies have been tested on hamsters and against the tissues of humans but not yet a living person.
Dr Glanville says he hopes to work with any nation to ensure they have immediate access to the medicine as soon as it gets approved.
"The antibody therapy at the hospitals acts as a safety net, and really, it's the antibodies that are going to flip the crisis," he says.
"As soon as you have a therapy that reduces the danger of this virus from current, very severe risk - this becomes much more like a manageable outbreak instead of a medical crisis - and then life returns to normal."
