Multiple Antibodies

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Anchor lead: Can a mixture of antibodies help our bodies respond to Sars-CoV2? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Engineered viruses form the backbone of a few of the Covid-19 vaccines being used and tested around the world, and these vaccines stimulate our bodies to make a range of antibodies against the virus, while some other vaccines rely solely on a single antibody. Andrew Pekosz, a vaccine expert at Johns Hopkins, says this may turn out to be the more antibodies, the better.

Pekosz: Everybody is focused now on these neutralizing antibodies because that’s the best correlate of protection we have with other coronaviruses as well as with other viruses in general. Those neutralizing antibodies bind to one very specific part of the spike protein, and they primarily work by preventing the spike protein from attaching to infect cells. Are some of those other antibodies, that bind to other areas of the spike protein, do they do something in terms of helping the immune response, in the body?  :30

Pekosz notes that only when these vaccines are widely administered will we know if one strategy is best. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.