The biopharmaceutical company Biopharma begins to conduct EIA (enzyme immunoassay) tests for availability of COVID-19 antibody assay for all plasma donors, EIA testing will identify those who have the disease in a latent form.
“Biopharma purchased 12,000 EIA tests manufactured by Roche and on May 18 we will begin testing donors for antibodies on our hardware base,” Kostiantyn Yefymenko, the co-owner of the company, said on his Facebook page.
He recalled that Biopharma has begun collecting plasma from donors who have undergone COVID-19.
“The first liters of such plasma have already been prepared, and our team is doing a very difficult job. We understood that it would not be easy. Very difficult,” he wrote.
Yefymenko noted that the number of potential donors is very limited. So, out of 4,700 people who recovered (at the time of publishing the post of Yefymenko) in Ukraine, 40% are older than 60 years and cannot be donors, 20% cannot be donors according to their indications.
“There remain 1,800 people in a large, forty-million country, who need to be found, and not all, but volunteers who are ready to become a donor,” he explained.
As reported, Biopharma has begun the development of a hyperimmune immunoglobulin based on plasma of people who had COVID-19, this drug can be effective for specific treatment of COVID-19.
Biopharma is a Ukrainian biotechnology company, the only plant in Eastern Europe that has modern technology, has been manufacturing and developing drugs from donated plasma for almost 50 years.
