Two teams of researchers have found that Regeneron’s antibody cocktail is effective in treating the coronavirus variants first detected in England and South Africa, the pharmaceutical company said Wednesday.

Scientists in virologist Dr. David Ho’s lab at Columbia University and with Regeron independently confirmed that the treatment “successfully neutralizes” the two fast-spreading variants. 

Regeneron noted that it believes the cocktail will also be effective against another variant, first found in Brazil, because that strain has the same mutations as the South African variant. Regeneron is conducting more research to confirm.

Regeneron’s antibody cocktail was one of the treatments given to former president Donald Trump when he was hospitalized with COVID-19 in October. He credited it for his quick recovery. 

The treatment received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration in November. It uses two antibodies that bind to the virus and prevent it from invading healthy cells. 

The researchers performed in vitro tests of numerous COVID-19 antibodies — including ones that have not received emergency use authorization — against the variants. Some antibody therapies were no longer effective against the new strains, but the REGEN-COV cocktail, the one that has received emergency approval, worked on all variants tested, Regeneron said.

"As we expected, the virus continues to mutate, and these data show the continued ability of REGEN-COV to neutralize emerging strains, further validating our multi-antibody cocktail approach to infectious diseases," Dr. George D. Yancopoulos, Regeneron’s president and chief scientific officer, said in a news release. "With two complimentary antibodies in one therapeutic, even if one has reduced potency, the risk of the cocktail losing efficacy is significantly diminished, since the virus would need to mutate in multiple distinct locations to evade both antibodies.”

The Columbia findings were posted to bioRxiv, a website for unpublished preprints of medical research, and have been submitted for peer-reviewed publication.

Eli Lilly has developed a similar antibody therapy, which also has been approved for emergency use. A company spokesman did not immediately respond to an email asking if it has conducted research into how its treatment performs against the variants.

On Tuesday, Regeneron said early analysis of 400 participants in a clinical trial who had a household member with COVID-19 showed that its antibody cocktail caused a 100% reduction in symptomatic infection and roughly 50% lower rates overall.

Eli Lilly said Tuesday its cocktail cut COVID-19-related hospitalizations and deaths in high-risk patients recently diagnosed the disease by 70%.