A team of researchers from Tel Aviv University have shown that antibodies isolated from the immune system of recovered COVID-19 patients are effective in neutralizing all known strains of the virus. According to the researchers, this discovery could lead to the elimination of the need for booster vaccinations.
The research was done at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine. The study was done in partnership with Dr. Ben Croker of the University of California San Diego. There is a professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Prof. Meital Gal-Tanamy was involved in the study. The study was published in a journal
A preliminary study was conducted at the height of the COVID-19 crisis. Dr. Freund and her colleagues isolated nine antibodies from the blood of people who had recovered from the original COVID strain in Israel. The new coronaviruses Delta and Omicron are very effective in killing them.
In the previous study, we found that the various antibodies that are formed in response to the original virus are directed against different sites of the virus. The most effective antibodies were those that were bound to the spike in the virus. The global health system made extensive use of them until the different versions of the coronaviruses rendered most of them useless.
Two other antibodies, TAU-1109 and TAU-2310, which bind the viral spike protein in a different area from the region where most of the antibodies were concentrated, were proved to be very effective in neutralizing the original strain. The effectiveness of TAU-1109 in the Omicron strain is 92% and in the Delta strain it is 90%. The Delta variant has an efficacy of 97% and the Omicron variant has an efficacy of 80%.
The evolution of the virus may have influenced the effectiveness of these antibodies. TAU-1109 and TAU-2310 do not bind to the ACE2 binding site, but to another region of the spike, which is why they are effective in more neutralizing. As we tested all the known COVID strains, we came up with these findings.
The two antibodies cloned in Dr. Freund's laboratory at Tel Aviv University were sent for tests to check their effectiveness against live viruses in laboratory cultures at the University of California San Diego and against pseudoviruses in the laboratories of Bar-Ilan University.
The fight against COVID-19 needs to be looked at in the same way that previous disease epidemics have been. People who were given a vaccine against smallpox at a young age, and who are now 50 years old, are likely protected from the monkeypox virus because of their immunity. This is not the case with the coronaviruses We don't fully understand why the level of antibodies against COVID-19 decline after three months, which is why we see people getting infections again and again even after being vaccine three times. Targeted treatment with antibodies and their delivery to the body in high concentrations can be an effective substitute for repeated boosters for at-risk populations and those with weakened immune systems. In the first days after a Covid-19 infection, it is possible to stop the spread of the disease. It is possible that we won't have to give booster doses to the whole population every time there is a new variant.
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