In fairness, we produce monoclonal abs for new indications - and get them into production - constantly. It's one of the richest fields in pharma right now. And people have been having slow-moving but noticeable success with this sort of approach for flu for a few years now. We may get there.

And when we do, it won't be recognizably related to this article, because the pop-sci writer and his headline editor mangled the description so terribly that it bears only a passing resemblance to what the study actually did.

Only a fraction of them end up being repeatable.

Not my field, but based on what I know of the quality of research in this lab and the fact that it was published in Science, I would be very surprised if the results aren't very solid and reproducible.

Then the next question is whether it will work effectively in humans, with no cure-worse-than-the-disease side-effects.

This fad is getting old, pharmacology has little trouble with reproducibility.

Few early-stage trials make it to market, but that's an entirely different matter. The treatment they developed, and published in a highly regarded journal, almost certainly works as described. That's a very different beast from a treatment that will be effective in humans to the high standards we hold modern drugs to.

> The treatment they developed, and published in a highly regarded journal, almost certainly works as described.

No, this is simply not true. Unless you also mean “cures the disease, but kills the patient for some other reason” and other net negative outcomes.

Most of those studies are on tissue samples, or rodent analogs. That’s not the same as live trials and there is no basis for claiming they’d work in situ.

The procedure was tested on live animals. I guarantee you that what they describe is precisely what happens. There's no guarantee that it prevents all types of flu, but that is not what the paper claims.

There's further no guarantee that the rat survives, or mates, or becomes emperor of China for that matter. What is reproducible is what is described in the paper, not what you might wish would follow.

Reproducibility is a very specific requirement. It requires that, following the procedure as outlined, you will find similar data. It has nothing to do with application, or utility, or anything else. It is simply that your results, for the same experiment, will be similar.

Those lucky fruit flies and llamas.

Can you please clarify or define what you meant by "in production"?

Very rarely will this stuff get past trials.

Actually, this is one I have seen in a trustworthy journal from Belgium ( De Tijd).

It started in 1989 and looks like the real deal this time. They have gotten funding and have been growing ever since. Doesn't seem like crap to me:

https://www.tijd.be/ondernemen/farma-biotech/het-bloedspoor-...

Ps. They were on the Belgium stock market as Ablynx

PS2. They got approval of the European Commission