President Donald Trump headed back to the White House on Monday evening, after three days in Walter Reed Medical Center. While there, he received a combination of antiviral drugs - some considered experimental.
He received an antibody therapy cocktail, remdesivir, and a steroid called dexamethasone.
"This is an aggressive set of medicines to be given early, but to be blunt, I think this is the future of where treatment will go," said Dr. Jacob Glanville, CEO of Distributed Bio and Centivax.
Glanville was also featured in the Netflix docu-series "Pandemic."
His companies specialize in developing antibody therapies and are currently working on therapies to battle COVID-19 that will be released next year.
"Antibody therapy and antivirals given early is the best way to stop this," he said. "It’s like stopping a forest fire by stamping out the first match rather than having to put out the first 100 trees."
The combination of antiviral treatments the president received both blocked the virus from transmitting from cell to cell and from making copies of itself. Dexamethasone prevents a person's immune system from attacking its own tissue.
Though Dr. Glanville said the treatment is effective, the problem is the price tag.
"Antibody therapies typically cost $8,000 to $10,000 per dose," he said. "If you need multiple doses, it’s not unusual for cancer patients to have to pay $40,000 to $100,000 for a series of treatments."
He said the cost of manufacturing the treatments is actually low.
"All the rest of that cost has to do with the way that we calculate drug prices in the United States. And that is a calculation of how much the insurance company is willing to pay for it," he said.
Glanville said clinical trials can cost as much as $40-50 million dollars, so companies like his need investors - and that drives up the cost.
"If you take on investors, they reasonably want a much higher return and demand you charge more," he said. "But that’s the problem. If you charge more for your medicine you might make more money from less people, but that means less people have access to your medicine."
Glanville said the government has invested $1 billion in vaccines, but just a fraction of that in antibody therapies. He said even in 2021, with vaccines, there will still be an ongoing crisis.
"The minute you have an abundant and affordable medicine in our hospitals, the crisis is over," he said. "The crisis is now downgraded to a manageable infectious disease."
Glanville is calling on the federal government to invest in antibody therapies to help drive down the cost. He said the goal is to make antibody treatments more affordable for everyone regardless of insurance.