They discover an ultra-powerful antibody against the different variants of the coronavirus

More than 18 months after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 231 million people have been affected and more than 4.7 million have lost their lives. Although the application of vaccine doses with high protection against the coronavirus is progressing, healthcare workers still have a limited number of effective therapies available to treat patients diagnosed with COVID-19.

For this reason, the search for treatments that may be of benefit to more patients has not yet stopped in scientific laboratories around the world. In addition, if the virus continues to circulate, there is a greater chance that more variants of concern will appear.

At Vanderbilt University Medical Center, USA, Scientific researchers have developed technology that has led to the discovery of an ultra-potent monoclonal antibody against several variants of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, including the delta variant.

Delta is the disturbing variant of the coronavirus that affects humanity the most. It was first detected in India in October last year and has so far been reported in more than 170 countries. It is also already in the South American region, and several countries already have local circulation of the variant: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Peru.

Delta’s impact changed the course of the pandemic in northern hemisphere countries, which had lifted mobility restrictions but had to back down due to outbreaks of COVID-19 cases in the past five months.

The antibody discovered by scientists at Vanderbilt University exhibits unusual characteristics that make it a valuable tool for the limited set of broadly reactive antibody therapy candidates. The discovery was published through a book in the magazine Cell reports.

The technology they used is known as LIBRA-seq. It has accelerated the discovery of antibodies capable of neutralizing the coronavirus. It also allows researchers to test for antibodies against other viruses that have not yet caused human disease, but have high potential to do so.

“It’s a way to proactively build a repository of potential therapies” against future outbreaks, said Dr Ivelin Georgiev, director of the Vanderbilt Program in Microbiology and Computational Immunology and Associate Director of the Vanderbilt Institute of Infection, Immunology and Inflammation, who was one of the lead authors of the published study.

“Pathogens continue to evolve, and we are basically working to catch up.”said Georgiev, associate professor of pathology, microbiology, immunology and informatics, and a member of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center. A more proactive approach is needed to anticipate future outbreaks before they occur in order to avoid a recurrence of COVID-19, “or something worse to happen in the future,” he said. .

In their report, Georgiev and his colleagues described the isolation of a monoclonal antibody from a patient who had recovered from COVID-19 who “Shows powerful neutralization” against SARS-CoV-2. It is also effective against variants of the virus that are hampering efforts to control the pandemic.

The LIBRA-seq technology was developed in 2019 by Dr Ian Setliff, a former graduate student of Georgiev’s lab who now works in the biotech industry, and Andrea Shiakolas, who continues to do research at Vanderbilt University.

Setliff wondered if he could map the genetic sequences of antibodies and the identities of specific viral antigens, which are the protein markers that antibodies recognize and attack, simultaneously and at high throughput. The goal was to find a faster way to identify antibodies that target a specific viral antigen.

With the help of the university’s central genomics laboratory, and other areas of different scientific disciplines, Dr Georgiev tested Setliff’s idea. And it worked. The efforts of Setliff and Shiakolas resulted in an article describing the development of the proof of concept of LIBRA-seq technology and published in the journal Cell in 2019. Now what they have done is apply this technology to find solutions and find better treatments for patients with COVID-19.

“It would have been impossible three or four years ago to move forward at the speed that we are moving now,” said Georgiev. “A lot has changed in a very short time when it comes to the discovery of monoclonal antibodies, as well as the development of vaccines.” There’s no time to lose. “If we give the virus long enough,” he said, “many other variants will emerge,” one or more of which – bypassing current vaccines – could be even worse than the Delta variant.

“This is precisely why it is necessary to have as many options as possible,” said Georgiev. The antibody described in this article “essentially gives you another tool in the toolbox.” Georgiev and Jason McLellan of the University of Texas at Austin are the corresponding authors of the article. Kevin Kramer and Nicole Johnson are the original authors of the article. The research was funded in part by grants from the National Institutes of Health, Hays Foundation COVID-19 Research Fund, Dolly Parton COVID-19 Research Fund at Vanderbilt, the researchers said.

In the range of treatments available for COVID-19, there is already a combination of drugs that was approved by the World Health Organization last week. This health agency has recommended the combined use of casirivimab and imdevimab, to treat non-serious cases of coronavirus at risk of hospitalization, although it has asked the company that manufactures them to facilitate their access given their high cost.

The treatment was cleared for emergency use in the United States by the FDA at the end of last November. It is indicated in patients “with mild symptoms of COVID and at high risk of hospitalization”, such as people over 60 years of age or with immunodeficiency problems (who suffer from cancer or have just had a transplant, for example).

The drug is designed to prevent infected people from developing serious illness. Instead of waiting for the body to develop its own protective immune response, it mimics the body’s natural defenses. “It’s a mixture of pairs of human monoclonal antibodies. In the United States, the treatment is working very well. However, one of the main problems with this therapy is its high cost, ”he said in dialogue with Infobae Guillermo Docena, biochemist and immunologist, professor of immunology at the National University of La Plata and principal investigator of CONICET.

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