The experimental drug has not yet been officially approved, but it has been used to treat the president of the United States.
The experimental drug REGN-COV2, which Donald Trump took during his treatment for coronavirus, was derived from cells taken from embryonic tissue after an abortion.
The White House and the president himself are trying to ban research in this area.
Trump explained his rapid recovery from the coronavirus infection by saying that, among other things, he had asked doctors at Walter Reed military hospital to give him an experimental antibody cocktail developed by the pharmaceutical company Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.
The drug is still being tested and has not been formally approved for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Nevertheless, according to the US president, the result of the drug’s action turned out to be a “real miracle”.
In a specially recorded video address posted on Twitter last Wednesday, Trump called the antibody cocktail the “key” to his recovery.
“I think it was a divine blessing that I was infected (with the virus – BBC). I think it was a hidden blessing,” said the head of the White House. “I got infected, I heard about this drug, and I said, ‘Give me a chance to try it’… and it worked incredibly well.”
As confirmed by the personal physician of the head of the White House, Sean Conley, the President of the United States received the first dose of the experimental monoclonal antibody cocktail REGN-COV2 on Friday, October 2, when he felt unwell and was rushed to the Walter Reed military hospital in the suburbs of Washington.
Trump is confident that he owes his quick recovery to the experimental cocktail.
At the pharmaceutical company Regeneron, the molecules needed for the cocktail are produced in hamster ovary cells, also known as Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells.
In addition, cells derived from human embryonic tissues are also used in the production of the drug.
Laboratory tests use a standardized cell line called HEK 293T to evaluate the effectiveness of the antibodies in the cocktail.
These cells were derived from kidney tissue of embryos obtained from abortions in the Netherlands in the 1970s.
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In recent decades, these cells have achieved “immortality”: they continue to divide under laboratory conditions.
To produce various drugs, specialists also introduce genetic modifications and additions to 293T cells.
Currently, according to Regeneron representatives, many laboratories in the United States and other countries use 293T cells to produce viral “pseudoparticles,” which are virus-like structures containing the coronavirus protein.
This is done to test the effectiveness of different antibodies in neutralizing the virus.
Two types of antibodies that Regeneron specialists used for the cocktail prescribed to Trump passed tests using embryonic cells.
However, according to representatives of the pharmaceutical company, the finished product does not contain embryonic cells.
Moreover, the cells used have been kept in laboratory conditions for several decades and have undergone numerous changes.
“You can phrase it any way you want, but the 293T cell lines we have today cannot be considered parts of embryonic tissue, and we do not use embryonic tissue in other preparations,” explained Regeneron representative Alexandra Bowie.
According to experts, another Remdesivir drug, also received by the President of the United States, was tested using the same HEK 293T cells.
Trump became the first president in U.S. history to attend an anti-abortion march.
In his video address on Wednesday, Trump reiterated several times that at his request, Regeneron’s experimental cocktail will be officially approved in the near future and access to this drug will be free for all Americans.
“Speaking for myself, when I got to the hospital (BBC), I didn’t feel very good. Within 24 hours, I felt great,” Trump said. “And that’s what I want to make available to everybody.”
The Trump administration has consistently advocated a ban on abortions and an end to any research using tissues and cells obtained in this way.
Last year, the White House officially banned specialists at the National Institutes of Health from using embryonic tissue in their research and stated that any requests to continue such experiments would be denied.
This January, Trump became the first president in U.S. history to attend the largest annual anti-abortion march in Washington.
Two years earlier, in 2018, he also became the first White House leader to agree to speak at the celebratory evening of the conservative political organization SBA List, which advocates for abortion bans.
However, the administration does not currently believe that the use of the experimental cocktail to treat the president in any way violated the ban on research involving embryonic tissue.
“The administration’s policy on the use of human embryonic tissues obtained from abortions for research purposes does not prohibit the use of tissues that were already available (pharmaceutical companies – BBC) before the ban was introduced on June 5, 2019,” said the official representative of the US government to the CBS television company.
This week it was announced that the company Regeneron has applied to the Agency for the Control of Quality of Food and Drugs for emergency approval of the drug REGN-COV2, which has not yet completed the third phase of trials.