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Bispecific antibodies potently neutralize SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern
- tomrod 2y agoSign me up!
- mkoryak 2y agoWhat does this mean? A better vaccine?
- blooalien 2y ago> What does this mean? A better vaccine? Probably eventually, yeah. Assuming all goes well with further research and development.
- fastball 2y agoNo, this is a treatment. Vaccines are preventative by priming your immune system, this directly targets SARS-CoV-2 itself, so is for people who actively have COVID.
- harshreality 2y agoAntibodies are not vaccines. Antibodies bind to an antigen (virus component in this case) to get the immune system to attack and destroy the antigen and whatever it's attached to. A vaccine causes the patient to develop specific immunity (fast reaction to a specific antigen) by introducing (usually injecting) a large amount of an antigen. That prompts the immune system to react by developing B-cells that produce their own antibodies to the antigen. It turns the body into its own antibody factory to deal with whatever you injected, but that takes time. Injecting antibodies, as in this study, bypasses the natural (slow) specific immunity generation process. Antibodies are created some other way (in a lab, or in some other animal) and then directly injected. It's done for serious diseases or dangerous toxins or immuno-compromised individuals, when waiting for the patient to develop their own specific immunity is too slow or dangerous. Critically, a vaccine allows the body to maintain the ability to fight off similar-enough infections for a while, but usually takes weeks or more to reach near full effect, sometimes requiring multiple shots for better effectiveness. If you're trying to treat an infection you think you might already have or will get in the next few days, vaccines only work if the progression of the disease is very slow, as in rabies which takes something like 1-2 months to make it into the CNS. Injecting antibodies is a one-shot treatment that must be repeated until the virus (or toxin or other bad thing) is gone. It's commonly done for toxins (spider or snake venoms), or sometimes for severe diseases (ebola, tetanus), but sars-cov-2 has so much attention that now they're doing it for that too. In patients who aren't immunocompromised, antibody treatments for less-lethal infections give their immune systems more time to generate their own antibodies without developing severe symptoms. The similarity in the two approaches is that they both ultimately involve antibodies binding to coronavirus proteins. The difference is in where those antibodies come from, and whether the body can produce more at will (vaccine --[time]--> natural immunity), or whether you have to keep injecting them (antibody treatments). That's only a rough approximation. The immune system is very complicated. Wikipedia, or a book on molecular biology or immunology, will go into a lot more detail.
- ggm 2y agoSo it could be given eg daily prophylactically to health workers, and important functional workers during a breakout pandemic to ensure they can continue to work, with very high likelihood of exposure. If it meant less biohazard cosplay (really? it works but it's such a high burden to get right and its exhausting from what health workers say) I'd say it's worth exploring on those grounds alone. Anything to keep health and vital service staff functional during the bad times.
- harshreality 2y agoMaybe there's a hypothetical where there's somehow rapid availability of specific antibodies, but no opportunity to vaccinate healthcare workers ahead of time, and it somehow makes sense to rely on antibody injections instead of PPE ("biohazard cosplay"). Here are some reasons why it probably doesn't. Getting treated with antibodies don't mean you're asymptomatic or that you'll feel well. It only means you'll have less severe symptoms. You'd have healthcare workers walking around sick, spreading the very disease they're trying to treat others for. Or taking up a hospital or clinic bed, not treating patients, using up limited healthcare resources — which, for the duration of their illness, is a worse outcome for their patients than if the healthcare workers weren't there at all. It's expensive. There's no economy of scale for an unusual disease outbreak. That applies to both antibody and vaccine stockpiles. If the disease is minor (like COVID-19 usually is for otherwise healthy individuals), healthcare workers might be willing to take a chance to avoid the hassle of PPE, but would their employer (such as a hospital, or MSF)? They're the ones who have to pay for antibody treatment if their healthcare employees get sick. They're the ones who have medical ethicists looking out for both the well-being of the frontline healthcare workers and patients. If the disease has a significant mortality rate, availability of a specific antibody treatment, even if it's stocked and instantly available, wouldn't motivate anyone to go without PPE. Nor would getting vaccinated. They're not guarantees of survival, and preventing healthcare workers from getting sick is more important than treating patients.
- ggm 2y agoYea I hadn't really thought it through. I went straight to a hallelujah outcome when most things "in mice" don't wash through, and are expensive. Disposable PPE is less expensive and we know it works. Sweaty and tiring, but works.
- Dwedit 2y agoMore like a better paxlovid.
- jimmygrapes 2y agoI think it's the thing the powers that be said was inconclusive and/or ineffective (monoclonal antibodies) and in the same realm of conspiracy theorist homeopathic solutions. Just takes awhile for things to work out, it's OK.
- Galatians4_16 2y agoExactly. Didn't you see how green and sickly these things made poor Mr. Rogan?
- thro1 2y ago> What does this mean? A better vaccine? New mutations (since some chronic, immunocompromised unable to clean the infection patient will get it).
- kens 2y agoThe title is "Bispecific antibodies targeting the N-terminal and receptor binding domains potently neutralize SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern". Note that although the antibodies were only helpful before infection, "its therapeutic efficacy after infection was limited." Thus, it isn't a treatment. Also, this study was in mice, not humans, so this is something potentially for the future, not something you can use now.
- divbzero 2y agodang, would you be able to update the title for this thread? The full title is too long for HN but could be shortened to: “Bispecific antibodies potently neutralize SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern”.
- fuckyah 2y ago[dead]
- jonlucc 2y agoAlso of note because of recent political choices, these are humanized mice, meaning they're transgenic. They have a human ACE2 gene instead of the mouse ACE2 gene, which makes the human version of the enzyme that the COVID virus uses to enter cells. This isn't my exact field, so I'm not positive, but I remember hearing that all of the COVID mouse models require transgenic mice.
- timr 2y agoThere's absolutely no problem with research on transgenic mice. Certain groups have been trying to claim that the US president confused "transgenic" and "trans(sexual|gender)" in his speech last week, but that is incorrect. There really was a series of government-funded studies concerning gender in mice [1,2]. [1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/03/yes-biden-spent-millions-on-transgender-animal-experiments/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/03/yes-biden-spent-... [2] Just to be clear: I have no opinion on this research, nor am I suggesting that it is wasteful. I'm just pointing out that the entire meme of "Trump confused transgenic har har har" is factually incorrect, and also deeply ironic.
- bigmattystyles 2y agoThe way they complain about it though, it seems to me that they think mouse studies are done for the sake of mice. ‘Crazy woke liberals want to make even mice transgender.’ Is the whistle they’re blowing.
- timr 2y agoOur political discourse is especially stupid right now, and it is bi-partisan.
- HeatrayEnjoyer 2y agoDrop the "both sides" falsehood.
- 2y ago
- petesergeant 2y agoNeeds an [in mice] tag
- loongloong 2y agoMaybe a [TRL x] tag too. In the current online discourse climate... The HN community can be a good candidate to collectively, over time and use... develop and refine a set of commonly understood tags to communicate context in post titles. If not in title, then maybe in the top / "pinned" comment. If they can spread beyond HN... that would be even better.
- mgcunha 2y agoWhat does TRL mean to you in this context ?
- loongloong 2y agoTechnology Readiness Level
- countWSS 2y agoAll variants? but N-Terminal is not immune to mutations and the specific antibody will drive evolutionary selection for those mutations - and rapid development of new variants https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8647783/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8647783/ search "N-Terminal"
- sharpshadow 2y agoSadly that reminds me how positive covid antibody test results haven't been a valid immunization attestation. Maybe this type of bispecific antibodies could be used to neutralize the spike protein which the body produces through the vaccine. As far as I understand the targeted deltoid muscle is a cell with a long life therefore procuding and releasing spikes for a yet unkown timeframe. Given the various specific boosters I can imagine one taking neutralizing antibodies to avoid a constant immune system stimulation.
- z991 2y agoThere's an important detail here -- an advantage of mRNA vaccines is that mRNA does not last all that long in cells [1]. Thus, even if the cells live a long time, they won't produce spike proteins for very long (instructions for the production will be degraded and thus not available). The vaccine's longer-term effectiveness comes from the immune system's memory B cells response to the short-lived expression of spike proteins. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messenger_RNA#Degradation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messenger_RNA#Degradation
- weaksauce 2y agoyou mean memory T cell right? As I understand it B cells are created by T cells to an acute infection.(they also kill infected cells but this is a gross simplification and i'm not a epidemiologist.)
- jbritton 2y agoSome individuals have spike protein after 700 days. https://news.yale.edu/2025/02/19/immune-markers-post-vaccination-syndrome-indicate-future-research-directions https://news.yale.edu/2025/02/19/immune-markers-post-vaccina...
- bogtog 2y agoI'm amazed by how virtually every single biology paper in a great-to-elite journal has stunning figures (even setting aside the protein diagrams). This makes me wonder how much of advisors' efforts go toward teaching their students graphic design
- lebimas 2y agoSpeaking as a former undergraduate and then graduate research scientist at a top 3 biomedical engineering program in the United States, I can tell you, students spend an unseemly amount of time on figures. The professor of one of the labs I worked in said an aesthetic figure can be the difference between getting into Nature or not. His collaborator on that paper happened to be a well-known professor who had papers published in Nature a handful of times. That was, apparently, one of his secrets.
- aprct 2y agoWould you be able to share the name(s) of said professor(s)? I’m asking for a scientist I know who is researching figures and their impacts on publication. They’d be very interested in this!