3 ms·

Not a specialist, but since there are no other expert comments here, I did a bit of googling, and here's my tl;dr - to get immunity to Covid you need antibodie

Not a specialist, but since there are no other expert comments here, I did a bit of googling, and here's my tl;dr - to get immunity to Covid you need antibodies - a vaccine teaches your body to produce these antibodies - but you would get a similar effect if someone injects in you the antibodies - that's for example the idea behind plasma transfusions from people who recovered from Covid; the problem with plasma transfusion is that it doesn't scale that well - you would ideally have some industrial process to produce these antibodies - here's how this process works: you get a bunch of immune cells to make the antibodies in vitro. These cells are clones of some other cells, so "clonal" antibodies. If they are all clones of a single cell you get "monoclonal" antibodies - initially those clone cells were mice cells, but that's less than ideal, as our own immune system may find identify the antibodies as foreign particles and attack them. Whenever the clone cells are "human" (or maybe indistinguishable from human for all intents and purposes), you get "human monoclonal" antibodies; some people consider them superior to non-human monoclonal antibodies, although both are in use So what this paper is saying is that they have identified a way to produce the human monoclonal antibody(or "human mAb") 47D11, which appears to be very effective against Covid. I have no idea how likely this is to become an effective drug, or how far we are from approval/use if that's the case. Here's 2 relevant links: wikipedia [1], reddit [2]. Edit: I just saw an article in The Economist [3] that names Tocilizumab as one of 2 promising therapies for Covid19 (the other one being remdesivir). The "mab" at the end of the drug name stands for "monoclonal antibody), and yes, this is a human monoclonal antibody too. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoclonal_antibody#Human_antibodies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoclonal_antibody#Human_anti... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/gdamp9/a_human_monoclonal_antibody_blocking_sarscov2/ https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/gdamp9/a_human_mon... [3] https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2020/05/04/two-potential-therapies-for-covid-19-have-some-effect?fsrc=newsletter&utm_campaign=the-economist-today&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=salesforce-marketing-cloud&utm_term=2020-05-04&utm_content=article-link-2 https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2020/05/04/...

vikramkr 7y ago
That's roughly the gist of it. Three minor things: The problem isn't producing the human monoclonal antibody (we know how to make mabs) but in identifying the right neutralizing antibody to produce, and this one that they've identified seems to be cross reactive to both SARS-COV-2 and to SARS-COV which is interesting. If this is to be developed as a drug, they'd need to test them in mice (currently difficult due to a shortage of COVID susceptible mice) and ultimately in human clinical trials. Tocilizumab is another monocolonal antibody, yes, but it's not a neutralizing antibody against the virus. It's an antibody against the interleukin 6 receptor, and it's goal is to act as an immunosuppresant to shut down something called a "cytokine storm," which is often the actual damaging factor in cases like these sorts of viruses where the immune system's own collateral damage kills the patient. And technically, Tocilizumab is a humanized antibody, not a human antibody. Fully human antibodies are the least likely to be recognized as foreign. Humanized are relatively less likely than non-humanized antibodies, but they aren't perfectly human.

vikramkr 7y ago

That's roughly the gist of it. Three minor things: The problem isn't producing the human monoclonal antibody (we know how to make mabs) but in identifying the right neutralizing antibody to produce, and this one that they've identified seems to be cross reactive to both SARS-COV-2 and to SARS-COV which is interesting. If this is to be developed as a drug, they'd need to test them in mice (currently difficult due to a shortage of COVID susceptible mice) and ultimately in human clinical trials. Tocilizumab is another monocolonal antibody, yes, but it's not a neutralizing antibody against the virus. It's an antibody against the interleukin 6 receptor, and it's goal is to act as an immunosuppresant to shut down something called a "cytokine storm," which is often the actual damaging factor in cases like these sorts of viruses where the immune system's own collateral damage kills the patient. And technically, Tocilizumab is a humanized antibody, not a human antibody. Fully human antibodies are the least likely to be recognized as foreign. Humanized are relatively less likely than non-humanized antibodies, but they aren't perfectly human.