Biotech companies and university labs are working on measles treatments as US cases rise to a 35-year high, Wired reported, a shift driven by falling vaccination rates and outbreaks in states including South Carolina and Utah.
The work is still early. Wired reported that the US had already passed last year’s 2,289 measles cases by July, compared with 285 cases in all of 2024. Researchers and companies are looking at treatments for infected patients and short-term protection for people at high risk, though any approved products are likely years away.
Measles vaccination has kept the market for treatments small for decades. The disease is so contagious that about 95 percent of a community needs both vaccine doses to protect people who cannot be vaccinated, including immunocompromised people and infants under 12 months. Wired reported that many US communities are now below that level.
What measles treatments are being developed?
One approach is monoclonal antibodies, lab-made versions of the antibodies the immune system uses to block infection. Given by IV or injection, they can provide protection for weeks or months, a model used during Covid-19 for some immunocompromised patients.
Invivyd, a Connecticut biotech company that developed a Covid monoclonal antibody, is developing a measles antibody. Michael Mina, Invivyd’s chief medical officer and an epidemiologist, told Wired that health care providers have asked when a similar product might exist for measles. The company has not tested its measles antibody in humans and is compiling data for the Food and Drug Administration to review before clinical trials, Mina said.
At the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, president and CEO Erica Ollmann Saphire and her team have studied human antibodies that attach to important sites on the measles virus. In a May study, the group reported that an infusion of those antibodies produced a 500-fold lower viral load in rodents, according to Wired.
Vanderbilt University scientists have also identified potent measles antibodies and partnered with Saravir Biopharma to develop them further. James Crowe, director of the Vanderbilt Center for Antibody Therapeutics, told Wired his group wants to use two monoclonal antibodies together to reduce the chance that the virus can mutate around the treatment. Crowe said the antibodies his team isolated strongly inhibit the virus and could be made as a long-acting shot.
Why this is hard to turn into a drug
Manufacturing monoclonal antibodies at scale is expensive and technically demanding. Clinical trials can cost millions of dollars, and Wired reported that pharmaceutical partners are often needed to pay for them. Infectious-disease drugs can be a tough sell because outbreaks are uneven and treatment courses are short.
Cost could also matter for patients and insurers. Wired noted that in early 2022 the US government spent $855 million for 1.7 million doses of Evusheld, a Covid monoclonal antibody. The drug was free to patients, but some people still faced hundreds of dollars in administration-related costs.
Regulators would also have to decide how to test these products. New drugs are usually tested in adults before children, but children, especially unvaccinated children, face higher risks of serious measles complications and hospitalization.
Antivirals are another possible route. Researchers at Georgia State University identified an oral antiviral and tested it in rats, ferrets and dogs infected with related viruses because those animals do not get human measles. Wired reported that the drug lowered viral load and all treated animals survived. It has not been tested in people.
Doctors currently rely on supportive care for measles, including preventing dehydration, managing breathing problems and using steroids for inflammation. Vitamin A is sometimes given because measles can lower vitamin A levels, but Wired reported that it does not act on the virus itself.
The public-health question is whether people who reject vaccination would accept these treatments. Wired reported that during the Utah outbreak, some parents refused immune globulin, a broad antibody product made from donated plasma. Crowe told Wired that declining vaccination rates make funding measles-treatment work urgent, especially for people who cannot be vaccinated.
This story draws on original reporting from Ars Technica.
