{"id":112576,"date":"2020-09-05T20:22:27","date_gmt":"2020-09-06T03:22:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/09\/researchers-identify-nanobody-that-may-prevent-covid-19-infection"},"modified":"2020-09-05T20:22:27","modified_gmt":"2020-09-06T03:22:27","slug":"researchers-identify-nanobody-that-may-prevent-covid-19-infection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/09\/researchers-identify-nanobody-that-may-prevent-covid-19-infection","title":{"rendered":"Researchers identify nanobody that may prevent COVID-19 infection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/researchers-identify-nanobody-that-may-prevent-covid-19-infection.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have identified a small neutralizing antibody, a so-called nanobody, that has the capacity to block SARS-CoV-2 from entering human cells. The researchers believe this nanobody has the potential to be developed as an antiviral treatment against COVID-19. The results are published in the journal Nature Communications.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe hope our findings can contribute to the amelioration of the COVID-19 pandemic by encouraging further examination of this nanobody as a therapeutic candidate against this viral infection,\u201d says Gerald McInerney, corresponding author and associate professor of virology at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology at Karolinska Institutet.<\/p>\n<p>The search for effective nanobodies\u2014which are fragments of antibodies that occur naturally in camelids and can be adapted for humans\u2014began in February when an alpaca was injected with the new <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/coronavirus\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">coronavirus<\/a>\u2019 spike protein, which is used to enter our cells. After 60 days, <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/blood+samples\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">blood samples<\/a> from the alpaca showed a strong immune response against the spike protein.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have identified a small neutralizing antibody, a so-called nanobody, that has the capacity to block SARS-CoV-2 from entering human cells. The researchers believe this nanobody has the potential to be developed as an antiviral treatment against COVID-19. The results are published in the journal Nature Communications. \u201cWe hope our [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-112576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112576\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}