MOSCOW, December 27. /TASS/. The Gamaleya National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology of the Russian Healthcare Ministry has obtained a grant to develop a preparation for treatment of the novel coronavirus infection based on monoclonal antibodies - an analogue of the preparation used to treat US President Donald Trump. The results may be presented as early as the end of next year, Center’s Director Alexander Gintsburg told TASS.

As Sean Conley, treating physician of the US President reported earlier, after being diagnosed with the coronavirus, the American leader was receiving an experimental antibodies-based serum produced by American Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. Trump himself said that he felt "superhuman" after taking the medication.

"Yes, on some directions we have now obtained grants and <...> one of my main laboratories is working exclusively on that [the development of a preparation]. These are monoclonal antibodies, these are actually those antibodies that protect [from the virus and are found] in the plasma of those who had the infection, only they will be obtained via genetic engineering outside of the human body and in a concentrated form. By the end of next year, I think, I will tell you about positive results, or maybe even sooner, maybe even in autumn," he said.

The scientist divulged that the center is also working on developing a vaccine that will simultaneously protect against the novel coronavirus and the flu. "We worked out the technology on rotaviruses, and already this variant of connection, linked to the coronavirus, [may be explored] closer to the end of next year. Yet this is a universal technology which basically should allow to create vaccine preparations against different strains of the same agent at once <…> or even against different viruses, like the coronavirus and the flu virus, when it is practically necessary to protect a person simultaneously," the researcher said.

"We also create various pharmaceuticals that should protect against intrahospital infections, this is the main cause of death of COVID patients at inpatient facilities when they are placed on artificial lung ventilators <...>. They die first of all of intrahospital infections. Yet this is, of course, not in a month or two, let’s hope that in a year all of this will appear," he concluded.