The World Health Organization says the coronavirus came from bats. A group of researchers at the University of Texas-Austin say the vaccine might come from llamas.
When researchers were studying two earlier forms of coronavirus, SARS-CoV-1 and MERS-CoV, years ago, they found an antibody in llamas that could attach itself to and neutralize the viruses’ spike protein, the portion that attacks other healthy cells.
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"The team has formed a new antibody that shows promise for treating SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, by linking two copies of the llama antibody that worked against the earlier SARS virus. They demonstrated that the new antibody neutralizes viruses displaying spike proteins from SARS-CoV-2 in cell cultures," Lara Korte wrote for the Austin American-Statesman.
“While we were working on this project, the new SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus emerged, and the spike proteins are pretty similar between SARS-CoV-2 and the original SARS,” Jason McLellan, associate professor of molecular biosciences at UT and co-senior author, told the Statesman. “We thought that maybe this nanobody, if we isolated it, would also bind to this one.”
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The best part about antibody therapy, McLellan said, is it works almost immediately, so it could quickly benefit senior citizens and frontline workers. Most vaccines take months to be effective.
“Immediately after injection, they’ll basically have immunity to that virus. It will wane over time, after a certain number of months, perhaps, but they become immediately immune, McLellan said.
The researchers' findings were published Tuesday in the journal Cell.
McClellan told the Statesman animal testing will begin soon, conducted by researchers in Belgium, and they could advance to human trials in about two months.
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