“The medicine will be there in five to six months,” Grosveld expects. “This is a very fast trajectory for developing a medicine.” He is one of the researchers who discovered of the antibody. Last March EM brought the scoop of the discovery of Grosveld and his colleagues. The 71-year-old professor remained sober under the discovery of the first antibody against the coronavirus. “I’m too old to jump on tables,” he said at the time.
Within two months, the approval of fellow scientists came and the result of the research was published in Nature Communications. That was an important step towards the production of a medicine. “We are very happy,” says lead researcher Berend-Jan Bosch of the Virology department (Faculty of Veterinary Medicine) at Utrecht University.
‘It's about helping’
“It’s all about helping patients,” says Grosveld on Radio 1. “That you happen to be the first, that’s nice, but less important.” Bosch feels the same way. “We are working 24/7 on research aimed at combating the coronavirus. At first, we thought it would be a sprint, but eventually I realised that we’re running a marathon at the speed of a sprint,” he told EM earlier. “But the ultimate goal is still to help people, that’s when you actually contribute something of value.”
And that value can be of great impact, Grosveld thinks. Healthcare workers can do their job more easily, you can prevent sources of infection and, according to Grosveld, with the arrival of a medicine, there is a chance that the virus will disappear.
