Faster, More-Accurate Antibodies in the Battles Against Disease

Antibodies can be an effective way of treating viral infections such as COVID-19, Justin Julander, research professor in USU’s College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences explains, but why some antibodies are more effective than others at targeting the same region of the virus is not well understood.

Julander’s collaboration with other scientists has identified constraints that limit antibody effectiveness. The researchers’ findings will help others design more effective antibodies.

“Antibody therapies can give people instant immunity as opposed to vaccines that take longer to provide protection,” Julander said. “Vaccines stimulate the body to make antibodies. We can circumvent this by giving effective antibodies without vaccination.”

Julander is among the coauthors of an article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He developed a mouse model in his work at USU’s Institute for Antiviral Research to test virus infection treatments. The study demonstrated that better antibodies were also better at protecting the mice from disease.

James Crowe, an infectious disease researcher at Vanderbilt University, was a coauthor on the paper. In an interview on CBS New’s 60 Minutes, Crowe described antibodies as “a heat-seeking missile that finds the virus, latches onto it and inactivates it … stops it in its tracks. Your body is a library of everything you've ever seen.”

Crowe was part of a team that isolated antibodies from survivors of the 1918 Flu Pandemic (sometimes referred to as the Spanish Flu). Under controlled experimental conditions he was able to prove that those antibodies could cure the Spanish Flu if it were to reappear today.

“We started thinking, as medical researchers, we could find the cure to virtually anything that had ever occurred on the planet,” Crowe said on 60 Minutes. “RNA antibodies could stop the next Wuhan-like outbreak cold.”

Vaccines are generally only useful if people are vaccinated before they are exposed to a disease-causing virus, Julander said, while antibody treatment can be used after exposure. The treatment described in the paper wouldn’t affect vaccine development but would serve as a treatment for people already exposed to a virus.