Gates Package — page 1012

year, and only about 30 million doses of antibodies. CHO antibodies are also expensive to make--the current cost of goods and services to make them is in the range of $70 to $120 per patient, too much for many low- and middle-income countries. But scientists are working on ways to solve these problems. For example, some are looking into different host cells that would produce antibodies more efficiently than CHOs, and other potential improvements in the process. They are also studying ways to find more potent and highly selective antibodies, so that you wouldn't need as much product per patient. Already there are ideas being tested but not yet commercialized that would get the cost down to more like $30 or $40 per dose. But the ideal would be to cut costs by a factor of ten--getting them below $10 per person--while also being able to produce ten times as many doses in the same amount of time. It will take a number of improvements to achieve that. Companies are also developing solutions to the problem of variants. One approach involves making antibodies that target parts of the virus that don't change, even across different variants--meaning they're just as effective against the variants as they are against the original virus. Another approach involves mixing a cocktail of antibodies that attack different parts of the virus, making it much harder for the virus to develop resistance to them. *** Back to the hypothetical disease that we're making treatments for. Let's assume we get a treatment approved and are able to manufacture lots of doses. How do we make sure it actually reaches everyone who needs it?