The race to find a measles treatment as infections surge

Mint

2 days ago

As a record number of people in the U.S. are sickened with measles, researchers are resurrecting the search for something long-deemed redundant: treatments for the viral disease.
After the measles vaccine was introduced in the 1960s, cases of the disease plummeted. By 2000, federal officials had declared measles eliminated from the U.S. This success led to little interest in the development of treatments. But now, as vaccination rates fall and infections rise, scientists are racing to develop drugs they say could prevent or treat the disease in vulnerable and unvaccinated people.
'In America, we don't like being told what to do, but we like to have options for our medicine chest," said Marc Elia, chairman of the board of Invivyd, a Massachusetts-based drugmaker that started working on a monoclonal antibody for measles this spring.
Scientists across the country including at biotechs Invivyd and Saravir Biopharma—and institutions such as Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Georgia State University—are in the early stages of measles-treatment development. The drugs are still a ways from becoming available to patients but could offer alternatives to people who are immunocompromised, don't respond to the measles vaccine or are vaccine skeptics.
Some doctors and researchers warn that measles treatments could further drive the drop in vaccination. Nationally, 92.5% of kindergartners received the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, shot in the 2024-2025 school year, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. In 2019-2020, the vaccination rate was over 95%, which is the rate encouraged by health authorities to prevent community transmission of measles.
More than 1,300 people, most of them unvaccinated, have been diagnosed with measles this year—a 33-year high.
'One of the motivations of getting the vaccine right now is that there are no treatments," said Dr. Joel Warsh, a pediatrician who says more research is needed into immunization safety.
Still, Invivyd is betting its measles monoclonal antibody could help curb infections and outbreaks. Unlike the MMR vaccine, which is designed to train the body to make its own antibodies—proteins that help defeat specific pathogens—monoclonal antibodies are lab-made versions that can be delivered intravenously or as an injection and boost immunity immediately.
Antibody treatments could treat someone who is sick or help prevent measles in people recently exposed to the virus. They could benefit newborns and immunocompromised people who can't be vaccinated, as well as the minority of people who don't respond to the vaccine or whose immunity has waned. The treatments could offer weeks or months of protection against measles, researchers said.
'Think of it like antivenom after a snake bite," said Erica Ollmann Saphire, chief executive of the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, whose lab is developing its own monoclonal antibodies for measles. 'Even people unsure about vaccines, if they are already sick with measles, getting an antibody treatment could be palatable."
Saphire's lab has identified a few antibodies that have shown promise in animal tests. Invivyd said it hoped to have a drug candidate by the end of the year.
At Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Dr. James Crowe, a pediatric infectious-disease specialist, has found success with a half-dozen antibodies that still need to be tested in people.
In searching for a treatment, researchers have been forced to better understand measles, which Crowe said hadn't been as thoroughly studied as some other ailments because the vaccine had been so successful. The body's immune response to measles, for instance, hadn't been well understood.
But he and other researchers now have a clearer picture of how measles antibodies work. Some block the virus from attaching to cells, while others interfere with a mechanism that allows the virus to fuse with cell membranes.
Alternatives to vaccination could be especially appealing among some communities in Texas, where Dr. Ben Edwards practices family medicine and has treated hundreds of measles patients, he said. Many of them were from a Mennonite community hard-hit by a recent measles outbreak and where vaccination rates are low.
'They're going to want to look at the data though," he said. 'There's been a tremendous uptick in lack of trust in medicine."
Edwards said he understands why many of his patients are skeptical of the MMR vaccine, which he said lacked adequate safety data.
The MMR shot remains the best and only way to prevent measles, the CDC said. Multiple large-scale studies conducted over decades have proven the MMR vaccine to be very safe and effective, the agency said.
Edwards said it makes sense to develop treatments—both drugs and alternative remedies—for measles so people have options. He said it was logical to think that more people would opt out of vaccination if effective treatments existed.
Edwards, who had never treated a measles patient until this year, said he advised patients to take vitamin A supplements such as cod liver oil. He said he also treated about one-third of his measles patients with budesonide, an inhalable steroid medication used to treat asthma, to help alleviate respiratory problems.
His approach attracted the attention of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who praised Edwards as an 'extraordinary" healer. Neither vitamin A supplements nor budesonide are considered measles treatments, said the Infectious Diseases Society of America, though budesonide can be used to treat complications from the illness.
Some studies show that people with vitamin A deficiencies can get sicker from the virus, but there is no evidence that patients who aren't deficient will benefit from taking more of it, said John Lednicky, a microbiologist at the University of Florida.
'The typical American is not deficient," he said. 'And if you take too much, it will make you sick."
Measles can cause severe acute disease and rarely death, but also 'immune amnesia," which causes the body to forget how to fight other infections, doctors said.
Richard Plemper, a biomedical scientist at Georgia State University whose lab is developing an oral antiviral treatment for the virus family that includes measles, said he thinks people who want to get vaccinated will still do so, whether treatments are available or not.
The antiviral he is working on, which is designed to block the ability of viruses including measles from replicating, has shown efficacy in animal experiments.
But Plemper said he isn't sure how his lab will fund further research. Scheduled tests for the antiviral compound in dogs were canceled recently after National Institutes of Health funding was terminated.
Saravir Biopharma, which was launched in July in collaboration with Columbia University to develop a measles monoclonal antibody, is banking on a continuing decline in vaccination rates to further fuel a need for measles treatments—and in turn, more investor interest.
'This is just the beginning," said Dr. Ron Moss, Saravir's CEO. 'I don't see public-health officials in this country turning around and saying everyone will need to get vaccinated in the next couple of years."
Moss said Saravir's antibody treatment, which is designed to stop the measles virus from fusing with the body's cells, could be tested in people as soon as next year.
Write to Dominique Mosbergen at [e-mail]