A recent study by a dozen scientists in the United States and Israel has isolated a nano-antibody that could prove valuable to humankind.
An unstoppable remedy against Covid-19? We’re not there yet, but the work recently done by a dozen researchers, mostly biochemists or geneticists, invites optimism. These scientists from American and Israeli universities would thus have succeeded in finding effective molecules to block all variants of SARS-CoV-2 at the source and prevent their formation.
As Medical News Today explains, these molecules, which are nano-antibodies (or nanobodies) much smaller and less complex than traditional antibodies, were obtained thanks to… a llama. The science news site says that as part of the study, the researchers performed a series of lab manipulations on a blood sample from the camelid that allowed them to find the rare pearl.
Simple and inexpensive to manufacture, easy to administer
During the process, which consisted in particular of immunizing the sample against Covid and then making it react to different variants, the scientists thus observed the crucial role of nanobodies, capable of “binding simultaneously to several coronavirus receptors” at the molecular level and preventing so that the latter develop in the body.
“These nanobodies are very effective against SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 variants, including Omicron,” confirm the authors of the study published by Science Direct. The molecule in question could therefore represent a very interesting basis for the treatment of Covid-19, especially since, according to the researchers, it is quite easy and inexpensive to produce, but also quite easy to administer.
“Likely complementary to the existing vaccine”
“In a preclinical study, we showed that our nanobody – PiN-31 – can protect both the lungs and the upper respiratory tract from infection,” says Professor Yi Shi, PhD in cell biology and lead author of the study, quoted by Medical News Today. Our data show that nanobody inhalation therapy can minimize transmission and is likely to complement the existing vaccine.”
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It now remains to compare this potential treatment with the next phases of testing before considering large-scale dissemination. In any case, the researchers are very optimistic about the assimilation potential of these nanobodies. “They can help overcome the fundamental problems of human antibodies. Because they are large molecules, our conventional antibodies have poor tissue penetration (…) as well as weak or no binding to regions of the surface of certain molecules that are fully accessible only to smaller-sized molecules.”
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