When the worst pandemic of the century struck, a group of nine Seattle Children’s Research Institute’s scientists teamed up with researchers from Rockefeller University to innovate powerful tools for diagnosing and treating a virus that has claimed over 5 million lives.
In a recent study published in E-life, scientists from Seattle Children’s Aitchison, Sather, Myler and Debley labs, in collaboration with Rockefeller University’s Chait, Rout and Bieniasz labs, demonstrate how a unique group of antibodies, known as nanobodies, could become an exceptional resource for superior COVID-19 protective and therapeutic interventions, as well as bring hope for effective treatment of diseases most commonly found in low-resource countries.
Antibodies are produced by our bodies as a protective response to bacteria, viruses and foreign substances in our blood. Nanobodies are fragments of antibodies produced by llamas and other members of the camelid family. Nanobodies are ten times smaller than human antibodies, they are remarkably robust and they are readily “humanized” for use in diagnostic and therapeutic treatments. Nanobodies bind to viral-producing antigens in places not accessible to human antibodies and are considerably more thermo-resistant.
