Monoclonal antibodies were owed to isopaste of the blood of a couple in Wuhan, China, who were diagnosed with COVID-19 after a Toronto, Canada, last January. These were two of the first cases shown of COVID-19 in North America.
Over the past two years, VUMC researchers led through James Crowe, Jr., MD, and Robert Carnahan, PhD, have developed ultra-fast strategies to detect highly potent human antiviral monoclonal antibodies and validate their ability for small, non-human animals. primates, all in less than 3 months.
Reporting last week in the journal Nature Medicine, the researchers and colleagues from across the country describe how they used this rapid antibody discovery platform to isolate hundreds of human monoclonal antibodies against the surface spike (S) protein that enables SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, to infect lung cells.
In a separate report published today in the journal Nature, VUMC scientists and their colleagues describe how two of the antibodies, VOC2-2196 and VOC2-2130, bind to separate sites in the S protein and, alone or in combination, decrease viral load. “in inflamed mice and them from weight loss and lung inflammation.
They also found that VOV2-2196 and some other potent antibodies, VOC2-2381, administered alone, protected rhesus macaques from SARS-CoV-2 infection. Taken together, these effects recommend that these monoclonal antibodies, alone or in combination, “be promising applicants for the prevention or remedy of COVID-19”, the researchers concluded.