Israel and Netherlands develop antibodies that may defeat virus



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Two separate groups of scientists in Israel and the Netherlands have developed antibodies that they claim can defeat the novel coronavirus, an early but promising step in efforts to find treatments.
Israel on Monday called its discovery a “significant breakthrough”. The “monoclonal neutralizing antibody” developed at the Israel Institute for Biological Research “can neutralize it (coronavirus) inside carriers’ bodies, ”defense minister Naftali Bennett said in a statement. It quoted IIBR’s director as saying that the antibody formula was being patented, after which a global manufacturer would be sought to mass-produce it.
The antibody is monoclonal (derived from a single recovered cell) and thus has more potent value in yielding a treatment. Elsewhere, there have been coronavirus treatments developed from antibodies that are polyclonal, or derived from two or more cells of different ancestry, Science Direct magazine said in May issue.
Scientists from Utretch University in the Netherlands, too, claimed to have created a monoclonal antibody – 47D11 – that targets the spike protein that gives the coronavirus a crown-like shape and lets it enter human cells. In the experiments, it didn’t just defeat the virus responsible for Covid-19 but also a cousin equipped with similar spike proteins, which causes SARS.
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