A new study led by Hans-Martin Jäck of the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany engineered clusters of neutralizing monoclonal antibodies using a transgenic mouse model. A unique characteristic for the antibodies was the different ways it bound to the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and the overall reduction in the viral spread for […]
A new study, released on the bioRxiv* preprint server, shows that rapamycin, an immunosuppressive drug used in some cancers, and its analogs, may have an undesirable effect on viral entry into the host cells. This finding could inform their use to treat symptomatic coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). There is a serious lack of effective antivirals […]
The lack of new or repurposed drugs to treat patients with severe or critical coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been one of the biggest hurdles to reducing mortality rates in the ongoing pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). A new study, published online in the journal Drug Development Research, describes […]
Researchers in the United States, UK, and Canada have published a commentary challenging the suggestion that the transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) may not be airborne. The novel SARS-CoV-2 virus is the agent responsible for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic that continues to pose a significant threat to global public […]
A team of scientists recently conducted a large-scale study at Northwell Health, New York, USA, to evaluate the efficacy of neutralizing monoclonal antibody (MAB) therapies in preventing disease progression among patients with mild to moderate coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The findings reveal that the timing of initiating MAB therapy is a crucial factor in determining […]
The rollout of vaccines is on in an attempt to achieve population immunity against the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). However, the recent emergence of several variants that have altered transmissibility, infectivity and virulence characteristics has cast doubt on the feasibility of this goal. A […]
A new study published in the journal Science Immunology analyzed lung epithelial cells from patients infected with COVID-19 and found the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) induces the complement system as a dangerous weapon for viral infection. The complement system is an extension of the innate immune system to recognize pathogens and remove […]
A team of scientists from the University of California Santa Cruz, USA, recently identified a novel variant (B.1.x) of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) that might be circulating in at least 20 US states and six countries globally. The mutations found in this variant are also present in other known variants of concern […]
The effect of different neutralizing antibodies, both vaccine-elicited and from convalescent sera, suggests new variants are emerging that can evade the human immune response. The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) binds to host cells via its spike protein, which has two parts, the S1 and S2 subunits. The S1 subunit has the receptor-binding […]
Evolutionary ecology theory offers avenues to anticipate the future behavior of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pathogen. The repeated emergence of more infectious and possibly more virulent variants of SARS-CoV-2 shows that the virus is adapting under selective pressure. Although there has been a lot of discussion on how biodiversity-related events facilitate […]
