How Antibodies Neutralise COVID-19 Infection US researchers have found how antibodies produced in people who effectively fight off SARS-CoV-2 work to neutralize the part of the virus responsible for causing COVID-19 infection.
The team from the University of Texas at Austin analyzed blood plasma samples from four people who recovered from SARS-CoV-2 infections. They found that most of the antibodies circulating in the blood — on average, about 84 per cent — target areas of the viral spike protein outside the receptor-binding domain (RBD) — the most obvious part of the coronavirus’s spike protein.
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What Does Antibodies Do In Your Body? Because the RBD is the part of the spike that attaches directly to human cells and enables the virus to infect them, it was previously assumed to be a primary target of the immune system. “We found these antibodies are painting the entire spike, both the arc and the stalk of the spike protein, which looks a bit like an umbrella,” said Greg Ippolito, Associate Professor in UT’s Department of Molecular Biosciences. “The immune system sees the entire spike and tries to neutralize it,” Ippolito added.
Antibodies Target Spike Protein Of COVID-19 Virus About 40 per cent of the circulating antibodies target the stalk of the spike protein, called the S2 subunit, which is also a part that the virus does not seem able to change easily, the researchers explained in the paper published in the journal Science.
