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Medicine

Scientists Create Antibody That Defeats Coronavirus in Lab (bloomberg.com) 89

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
Scientists created a monoclonal antibody that can defeat the new coronavirus in the lab, an early but promising step in efforts to find treatments and curb the pandemic's spread. From a report: The experimental antibody has neutralized the virus in cell cultures. While that's early in the drug development process -- before animal research and human trials -- the antibody may help prevent or treat Covid-19 and related diseases in the future, either alone or in a drug combination, according to a study [PDF] published Monday in the journal Nature Communications. More research is needed to see whether the findings are confirmed in a clinical setting and how precisely the antibody defeats the virus, Berend-Jan Bosch of Utrecht University in the Netherlands and colleagues wrote in the paper. The antibody known as 47D11 targets the spike protein that gives the new coronavirus a crown-like shape and lets it enter human cells. In the Utrecht experiments, it didn't just defeat the virus responsible for Covid-19 but also a cousin equipped with similar spike proteins, which causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS.
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Scientists Create Antibody That Defeats Coronavirus in Lab More

Scientists Create Antibody That Defeats Coronavirus in Lab

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  • who cares? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by goombah99 ( 560566 )

    Creating antibodies isn't even slightly a problem. You do it all the time. It's inducing you to do it is what a vaccine does. And if you want an antibody that defeats COVID it's simple to find. Just filter plasma from a survidor, select it for binding to covid, then sequence the results. Ta Da. done.

    • Has anyone tried drinking dog piss? Because a dog would kill a bat.
    • I think the news entertainment industry is treading on thin moral ice. They are continually reporting on "initial studies" or "not peer reviewed". Basically the scientific equivalent of getting your new sources from Facebook or Twitter

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by MightyMartian ( 840721 )

        I heartily agree with this. I think researchers have to share some of the blame. There's clearly a play here for the vast sums of money being put into research for a vaccine and other therapies to deal with COVID-19. But this is a very early stage kind of research, months away from even animal trials. Lots of things work in controlled conditions that turn out to be damp squibs at trials, or worst case scenario, actually come with such significant side-effects of their own they are deemed to dangerous to eve

        • I agree with most of what you said, but frankly in this situation even 6 months of immunity would be super helpful. We'd have some idea of how long-lived immunity is from the early clinical trials, and based on approval/production times we ought to know that before a substantial proportion of people are inoculated. We'd ideally then continue inoculating people while searching for a better vaccine.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        Most news stations literally stick an anchor in front of a screen showing twitter and have them read the tweets, so it's not like this, even the metaphor, is a new thing for them.

    • Re:who cares? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot&worf,net> on Monday May 04, 2020 @06:07PM (#60022188)

      Creating antibodies isn't even slightly a problem. You do it all the time. It's inducing you to do it is what a vaccine does. And if you want an antibody that defeats COVID it's simple to find. Just filter plasma from a survidor, select it for binding to covid, then sequence the results. Ta Da. done.

      You know what else uses antibodies? Tests!

      If you want to detect SARS-CoV-2 (the virus), you use antibodies. They bind with receptors on the virus, and the antibodies usually carry some fluorescing molecule to indicate taht yes, they've detected the virus.

      Thus, if you can easily make the antibodies, you can now make a reliable test for the virus.

      Right now the only way we do it is by detecting viral RNA in the bloodstream, replicating that through PCR and detecting the RNA sequences. That's why it takes so long - the PCR process is not quick. (It's slightly more complex - we actually convert the RNA to DNA and replicate that - the virus has to carry its own enzymes to do RNA-to-RNA transcription because our cells can'd replicate RNA, and of course, it also needs to code those enzymes so our cells will build them as well).

      If you can reliably make a lot of antibodies, you're on your way to an instant 15-minute test that's reasonably accurate if you have the virus.

      Antibody tests detect the antibodies themselves and tell you if you had had the virus and are a step removed from detecting the virus.

      This test will tell you if you HAVE the virus, not that you HAVE or HAD the virus. Thus it can detect when you have it and when you've recovered from it.

      • don't need protective antibodies for tests

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by mishehu ( 712452 )
        To the best of my knowledge, if you want to detect if somebody has antibodies for a given pathogen, you need to produce antigen. The antibody in the patient's blood binds to the antigen, causing the reaction.

    • "Just filter plasma from a survidor, select it for binding to covid, then sequence the results. Ta Da. done."

      Are you that astronaut-cowboy-heart-surgeon-DNA-Specialist?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      This is a bit better than that, though not be a whole lot.

      This is a single strain of antibodies the binds to COVID in an incapacitating manner. The questions are "Will it do it in an whole animal?" and "What else does it bind to?". The second one can end up causing a huge number of quite unpleasant, or even deadly, side effects.

      IIUC, over 90% of drugs that get this far have some reason to never hit the market. Possibly well over 90%.

      • monocolonal antibodies are wonderful in terms of being able to manage the purity and recrecration of exact doses. But polycolonals for all their production and calibration problems have the advantage that they will continue (mostly) working as a virus mutates so less chance of viral escape.

        • Blood plasma like you describe is used as a treatment... but I've always seen it talked about as the blood plasma from one person being enough to treat just one (or a small number) of other people (I assume you could take multiple blood samples, but you can only get someone to donate so much blood a week). If replicating the antibodies were straightforward, then I assume that limitation wouldn't exist.

          you got it. Thanks you for replying with a good point. it's not hard to find the antibody. it's hard to make it and get it (safely) into people. this is why certain antibody therapies work well (e.g. Humira) but are generally expensive and hard to do in large distributions. Plasma transfers are easy in the sense you skip steps in purifying and it's pretty safe but you only can squeeze a few doses out of the human supplying it.

    • This is about monoclonal antibodies though. To make these you need the immune cells that make these antibodies. And being able to make these means that they can be produced in large numbers.

      • yep you got it. that'a the real story here. Can you produce it. Polycolonal or monocolonal both have relative advantages but making either in quantity and humanized is the whole trick. Humira costs $4000 for a single very small dose. therapeutic quantities for a virus would be harder to produce and distribute. Simply getting the antibody even a protective one isn't the problem. Which is what I said but got marked down as a troll.

    • It is still useful to be able to generate it artificially since you might not always be able to find enough survivors to meet the need and as well, due to possible safety issues with the donor having STDs etc.

    • Who's comment are you responding to? Because it certainly isn't mine since your comments in no way relate to what I said.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      There's a wee bit more to producing antibodies en mass so you can use them as a practical treatment. Basically you have to convince a b cell to make the antibody you want (and only that one), then clone it. The result is *monoclonal* antibodies. The technique is already used to create some approved drugs for things like cancer and autoimmune diseases.

    • Binding to the virus does not always mean inhibiting it or "defeating" it. And because normal antibody responses are so diverse, it's actually quite difficult to isolate a monoclonal antibody from plasma.

      • Binding to the virus does not always mean inhibiting it or "defeating" it.

        But in this case it is binding to the spike. And without a working spike the virus can't infect cells. So it is defeating it in this case.

    • doesnt it work closer to organ transplants ? like alien antibodies might be actually rejected and make you sick as if you would feel sick when your own antibodies attack the virus . (a guess, i dont dare speak on it really i don't know) and thats why the trials take time . But if it works you can always ask dying people if they wanna i guess ... i mean ... what would they have to lose

  • Thank god. Can researchers get back to growing new organs and, ummm, larger body parts?

  • The trick is to develop something that kills the virus and nothing else.
    • Generally, treatments for this kind of thing don't kill the pathogen directly, but instead either prime (for a vaccine) or aid (for a cure) the body's own immune system to fight and kill the pathogen instead.

  • I hate how poorly people are informed on this... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Nabeel_co ( 1045054 ) on Monday May 04, 2020 @05:39PM (#60022112) Homepage
    "It didn't just defeat the virus responsible for Covid-19 but also a cousin equipped with similar spike proteins, which causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS."

    The virus that causes COVID-19 disease is SARS. Specifically SARS-CoV-2, the SARS outbreak in the early 2000s was SARS-CoV.

    I really wish people knew and understood this. Because it really underlines the fact that had we taken the original SARS outbreak more seriously, like all the medical professionals (and Bill Gates) insisted we should, then we likely would have had a solution in place already and we wouldn't be in quarantine right now.

    But we didn't take it seriously, so as a result, we're all stuck at home, and millions of people have lost their jobs.
    • And to add, hundreds of thousands of people have died because of it too.

      • The virus does hasten death for those with a lot of pre-existing conditions.

        The bottom line of custodial care in nursing homes is shot.

        In the end everybody dies. The statistics are staggering.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by aliquis ( 678370 )

      SARS is a disease.
      For whatever reason this disease is called COVID-19 rather than SARS2.

      SARS-CoV-2 isn't SARS-CoV. If it was it would be called SARS-CoV.

      I don't know how much is the same with them.

      • SARS is the disease, SARS-CoV is the virus that causes SARS.

        COVID-19 is also a desease, very similar to SARS, and the virus the causes it is SARS-CoV-2.

        There is a lot that is the same with them. It's another strand of the same virus.
    • Failure to grasp this also fuels the "China bioweapon" conspiracy theory. People think, 'how could it be coincidence that China was studying a virus just like this one before it became a pandemic?' and then jump to the conclusion China must have engineered Covid19.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by MightyMartian ( 840721 )

        Dangerous pathogens have been flowing out of China for centuries, perhaps thousands of years. It has, since the Neolithic, had among the highest population densities in the world, so the odds of nasty bacteria and viruses making the leap between species is a lot higher than it would be in less densely populated areas. Was the Yuan Dynasty doing germ warfare experiments when the Black Death flowed out of China and into the rest of Eurasia in the 14th century?

      • It's totally reasonable for the CCP to study coronaviruses as a potential pandemic, and if it turns out they were studying natural coronaviruses I will applaud them for doing the research while calling for the public execution of everyone who helped cover up the outbreak initially.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hawk ( 1151 )

        a classic case of "never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence" . . .

        hawk

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luthair ( 847766 )
      That's not true, COVID-19 is closely related to SARS (and MERS) but its not the same virus. There isn't a guarantee a vaccine developed for either would be effective against another emerging corona-virus, as such its quite difficult to justify the financial cost or the risk of human trials for a virus that had disappeared.
      • COVID-19 isn't a virus at all! Just like SARS isn't a virus!

        COVID-19 and SARS are deseases caused by the SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV viruses respectively.

        They are not the same virus but they are the same strain of virus. Had we worked to address SARS-CoV, we'd likely be very well equipped to deal with SARS-CoV-2

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Luthair ( 847766 )
          Except that we did do that, which is why we have the potential for a vaccine in the near term.

    • Re:I hate how poorly people are informed on this.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by ensignyu ( 417022 ) on Monday May 04, 2020 @07:04PM (#60022450)

      SARS-CoV-2 is a newer form of SARS-CoV, but there's obviously some big differences in terms of lethality and asymptomatic spread.

      We did take SARS seriously. It died out. Nobody is being infected with the original SARS. The problem is that we never prepared for "SARS 2" or for that matter, any sort of pandemic caused by a novel virus (novel influenza, Ebola-2, etc). I'm definitely splitting hairs a bit here, but we broadly need investment in infectious disease research and pandemic preparedness, not just for SARS-CoV-like viruses specifically.

      • "SARS-CoV-2 is a newer form of SARS-CoV, but there's obviously some big differences in terms of lethality and asymptomatic spread."

        SARS-CoV-2 is less lethal from everything I've read, however asymptomatic spread is much higher than with SARS-CoV, which is making it's spread much harder to control, hence the bigger death toll.

        "We did take SARS seriously. It died out. Nobody is being infected with the original SARS."

        No, we didn't. We quarantined it, and let it die off. We never did the research to fight the v

        • you are silly, attempts to make vaccine were tried, look it up. BUT we've never successfully made a coronavirus vaccine for humans, ever, in over half a century of trying. we may never have one.

        • No, we didn't. We quarantined it, and let it die off. We never did the research to fight the virus. So the virus kept mutating, until we got SARS-CoV-2 which has this asymptomatic spread.

          We did do the research to fight it, but a lot of the trials ran out of infected people to test with since the virus was eliminated too quickly.
          That research did form a lot of the basis for some of the current research.

    • Eh, we should have taken it more seriously, but I don't think we'd have a large-scale, ready-to-deploy solution in place. Nobody wanted to fund much research, not even the CCP, and if we had done the research we wouldn't have millions of vaccine doses lying around. Not to mention, the most promising vaccine candidates now use technology that wasn't around back then, and there's no guarantee whatever we did for SARS-CoV using that tech would work against SARS-CoV-2.

      I totally agree we should have taken SARS

    • Bingo. This is what I came here to say. If we spent more time developing treatments or vaccines for coronaviruses, it would be a small leap to resolving this one similar to the flu vaccines developed yearly for the newest most common strains. The previous encounter we had with them was deadly, but didn't blow up like this one and everyone lost interest. Just a little preparation over the more than a decade we had since the last scare would have saved us all of or most of this crap we're dealing with today.

    • We took it quite seriously. And were as far as having vaccines undergo animal testing. Then SARS... disappeared.

      If your notion is we should have dedicated all our resources to continuing to fight a defunct virus, that would be ridiculous. For one, clearly those vaccines SARS-CoV-1 vaccines aren't helping us much now. We also had no reason at all to believe the next pandemic would be a variant. In fact, given it disappeared, we had strong evidence against that idea. The most likely candidate was a strain o

      • You can't prepare a vaccine or a treatment for the next novel pandemic virus. You just can't. You need actual viral samples to work with. What we could have done is treat China like the untrustworthy adversary that they are, take strong measures to prevent spread at the first hint of outbreak, and have ample supply of pandemic medical equipment.

        So you are saying Trump should have listened to the WHO? Same as South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong etc.
        Instead of telling people it was just a cold, totally under control, and about to miraculously go away.
        I guess we all know who to vote for to prevent the next pandemic...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      And many people die. More to come too. :(

    • But we didn't take it seriously, so as a result, we're all stuck at home, and millions of people have lost their jobs.

      Well, I recall lots of talk about SARS in the papers and on the net back then, but if you realize that the official world wide death count from SARS stopped somewhere under 800 (surprised me too) it's understandable how people, and money, reacted. I'm not saying it's right, just that it's understandable.

  • So what? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by djp2204 ( 713741 ) on Monday May 04, 2020 @05:56PM (#60022154)
    Monoclonal antibodies have a bad habit of causing cytokine release syndrome, which is what kills patients who have severe cases of covid19. Until we can prove that this does more good than harm, it has nothing more than potential

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      The slightly reckless voice in my head says, "Yes, but that's what the tocilizumab is for." :-D

  • While that's early in the drug development process -- before animal research and human trials

    If it's not in animal research trials it will never be used to fight COVID-19, we will have a vaccine long before it's available.

    This is interesting fundamental research that will be used for treatment of diseases in the future, maybe COVID-29.

    • Well, if it doesn't end up being useless or being outright harmful, it will probably be a step forward for the next dangerous coronavirus strain. An answer to the current pandemic this almost certainly is not.

    • This is interesting fundamental research that will be used for treatment of diseases in the future, maybe COVID-29.

      I'll wait for COVID-29 Pro Plus XR2, thank you very much.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      I think you're being optimistic. Yes, there are several vaccines in early human trials. But this doesn't mean that any of the candidates will survive those trials and be useful. Drugs, including vaccines, have a long history of failing to survive trials. Even when they get to phase 3 trials there is a large chance of failure.

      So we MAY have a vaccine by this time next year. Don't bet your weeks grocery money on it, much less your life.

  • 4, 6, 8, 10... nope, I don't have a D11. Hang on while I run down to the gaming store to get one, then roll it 47 times and add up the results for my saving throw vs. COVID-19.

  • Easy (Score:3)

    by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Monday May 04, 2020 @06:28PM (#60022278)

    Turns out, the solution was simple. Have antibodies with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads.

  • Why does the phrase "We know it was us who scorched the sky" come to mind?

  • Infect a monkey, pump it full of this antibody, see what happens. It doesn't die, then let's move forward with it.
  • That's OK. I've been lying naked in the sun getting disinfected with Youvee rays.

  • Does it work on other breeds of dogs?

  • Good, they're working on immunoglobulin therapy (Score:4, Interesting)

    by NotSoHeavyD3 ( 1400425 ) on Monday May 04, 2020 @09:23PM (#60022762) Journal
    For coronavirus. No idea how hard this is to pull off but the same idea is used to treat rabies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

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