Can llamas cure Covid?
Animals’ antibodies kill the virus... and could be used to treat patients
LLAMAS may come to the rescue of humanity in the fight against Covid-19, research suggests.
An antibody in the blood of the woolly South American animals has been found to kill the virus in laboratory tests.
The llamas’ antibodies – known as nanobodies due to their small size – could eventually be developed as a treatment for patients with severe Covid-19, scientists believe.
The immune system produces antibodies when it is being attacked, or in response to infections. Llamas, camels and alpacas naturally produce quantities of small antibodies with a simpler structure that can be turned into nanobodies.
A team from the Rosalind Franklin Institute at Oxford University,
Diamond Light Source and Public Health England were able to engineer new nanobodies using a collection of antibodies taken from llama blood cells.
The llama nanobodies stuck firmly to the ‘spikes’ of the Covid19 virus, blocking them from breaking into human cells and so stopping infection.
In the study, published in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, the team also identified that the nanobodies bind to the spike in a different way from previously discovered antibodies.
James Naismith, professor of structural biology at Oxford University, said: ‘These nanobodies have the potential to be used in a similar way to convalescent serum, effectively stopping progression of the virus in patients who are ill.
‘We were able to combine one of the nanobodies with a human antibody and show the combination was even more powerful than either alone.
‘Combinations are particularly useful since the virus has to change multiple things at the same time to escape – this is very hard for the virus to do.’
He added: ‘The nanobodies also have potential as a powerful diagnostic [tool].’
Researchers started with a laboratory-based library of llama antibodies, and are now screening antibodies from Fifi, a llama that lives at Reading University, taken after she was immunised with harmless purified virus proteins.
The team is looking at preliminary results which show that Fifi’s immune system has produced different antibodies from those already identified, which will enable cocktails of nanobodies to be tested against the virus.
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