COVID-19: Belgian and American scientists look to the flame for treatment

BRUSSELS: A flame called Winter could be helpful in the search for a treatment for COVID-19, according to Belgian and American scientists who have identified a small particle that appears to block the new coronavirus.

The scientists, from the Belgian VIB-UGent center for medical biotechnology and the University of Texas at Austin, published research Tuesday in the journal Cell, with the flame in Belgium at the center of their studies.

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The group started four years ago looking for antibodies that could counteract the SARS virus, which spread in 2003, and the MERS virus that broke out in 2012.

“The work was a side project in 2016. We thought maybe this was interesting,” said Xavier Saelens, joint leader of the Belgian side of the collaboration. “Then the new virus came along and it became potentially more crucial, more important.”

Winter, the flame, received safe versions of the SARS and MERS viruses, and then blood samples were taken.

Llamas and other members of the camel family are distinct in creating standard and smaller antibodies, which scientists can more easily work with.

The Belgian part of the research team, also led by Bert Schepens, identified fragments of the smaller antibodies, known as nanobodies, to see which one most strongly bound to the virus.

Saelens describes the new coronavirus as the cousin of the SARS virus. Both have a crown shape, or crown, with protein spikes, onto which an antibody can latch.

The team intends to start animal testing, in order to allow human testing to begin later in the year. Saelens said they were negotiating with pharmaceutical companies.

The research is not the first in camel or llama-derived nanobodies. French group Sanofi paid € 3.9bn (£ 3.4bn) in 2018 to buy Ghent’s nanobody specialist Ablynx.

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