Researchers have discovered a “promising” antibody against SARS-CoV-2 that “holds the promise of an effective antidote to limit the Covid-19 pandemic”.
- Researchers have discovered an antibody capable of neutralizing Covid-19.
- The antibody in question, S309, prevents the virus from attaching itself to cells to infect and replicate there.
- The combination of S309 with two other antibodies improves its neutralizing power.
The burgeoning search for a treatment against the coronavirus could well be at a turning point. A Swiss-American team has discovered an antibody “promising” against SARS-CoV-2, a discovery resulting from research on the 2003 SARS epidemic. The team is made up of researchers from the Swiss biotech Humabs Biomed (subsidiary of the American Vir Biotechnology) and the American University of Washington in Seattle. The results of their study were published in the journal Nature.
an epitope
The researchers managed to select a monoclonal antibody that shows “broad neutralizing activity against multiple sarbecoviruses including SARS-CoV-2”, as the article states. Sarbecoviruses are a category of coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2 responsible for the current pandemic but also the virus responsible for the SARS epidemic between 2002 and 2004. It is also among the antibodies taken in 2004 , then in 2013 in the blood of the same patient who suffered from SARS, that the researchers selected the human monoclonal antibody which they baptized “S309”.
Concretely, the S309 antibody acts by recognizing an “epitope”, that is to say that it attaches itself to the new advanced protein of the coronavirus, which allows it to attach itself to the receptors of cells to invade them, thus preventing the virus from entering cells to replicate. Thus, the patient can contract the virus but thanks to these antibodies could not get Covid-19. In addition, researchers from the Institut Pasteur and the CNRS have observed that a combination between S309 and two other antibodies offers a “improved neutralizing power”, even more effective than the S309 antibody alone.
A hope
This antibodyholds the promise of an effective antidote to limit the Covid-19 pandemic” say the researchers. The combination of S309 and two other antibodies could “mitigate the risk” of the emergence of viral resistance against this type of treatment. “Our data points to the potential discovery of potently neutralizing monoclonal antibodies against sarbecoviruses (…) and sets the stage for a better response” in the event of new epidemics caused by this type of virus, conclude the researchers.
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