New pair of antibodies could defeat all SARS-CoV-2 variants

New pair of antibodies could defeat all SARS-CoV-2 variants

A Stanford-led team has found two antibodies that can work together to defeat all SARS-COV-2 variants. More research is needed, but the approach could help develop treatments to keep pace with evolving viruses.

The virus that causes COVID-19 was very good at continuing to infect people—so good that most antibody treatments developed during the pandemic are no longer effective. Now a team led by researchers at Stanford University may have found a way to knock down the ever-evolving virus and develop longer-lasting treatments.

The researchers discovered a method of using two antibodies to act as a kind of anchor by attaching themselves to an area of ​​the virus that doesn't change much, and another to inhibit the virus's ability to infect cells. This pairing of antibodies has been shown to be effective against the initial SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused the pandemic and all of its variants by Omicron in laboratory tests. The results are detailed in the journalScience Translational Medicine.

Faced with an ever-changing virus, we have developed a new generation of therapeutics capable of resisting viral evolution, which could be useful many years later to those infected with SARS-CoV-2. “

Christopher O. Barnes, senior author of the study, assistant professor of biology at Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences and scientist at Stanford's Sarafan Chem-H

An overlooked option

The team, led by Barnes and first author Adonis Rubio, a graduate student at Stanford School of Medicine, conducted this research using donated antibodies from patients who had recovered from Covid-19. They analyzed how these antibodies interacted with the virus and found one that latched onto a region of the virus that doesn't mutate often.

This region within the spike N-terminal domain, or NTD, had been overlooked because it was not directly useful for treatment. However, if a specific antibody is located in that area, it will remain attached to the virus. This is useful when designing new therapies that allow a different type of antibody to gain a foothold and localize to the virus's receptor binding domain, or RBD, essentially blocking the virus from binding to receptors in human cells.

The researchers developed a series of these dual or "bispecific" antibodies, called COV2-BIRN, and showed in laboratory tests high levels of neutralization of all variants of SARS-COV-2 known to cause disease in humans. The antibodies also significantly reduced viral loads in the lungs of mice exposed to a version of the Omicron variant.

Further research, including clinical trials, would need to be conducted in human patients before this discovery as a treatment, but the approach shows promise - and not just for the virus that causes Covid-19.

Next, researchers will work to design bispecific antibodies that are effective against all coronaviruses, the family of viruses, including those that cause the common cold, MERS and Covid-19. This approach could also potentially be effective against influenza and HIV, the authors said.

“Viruses are constantly evolving to maintain the ability to infect the population,” Barnes said. “To counteract this, the antibodies we develop must also continuously evolve in order to remain effective.”

Sources: