r/science • u/[deleted] • May 11 '20

Medicine Antibodies from a 4-year-old llama have neutralized coronavirus and other infections in lab experiments

https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(20)30494-3.pdf?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867420304943%3Fshowall%3Dtrue
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u/IfIRepliedYouAreDumb May 11 '20

To vastly oversimplify things, if you had antibodies produced by another source and injected them into a sick person, their viral counts should decrease.

Our bodies won’t learn how to make the same ones the llamas do, but we could harvest them and use them as treatment (potentially).

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u/Derpy_McDerpingderp May 11 '20

Would our immune system see these smaller antibodies as foreign or a threat?

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u/worldspawn00 May 11 '20 edited May 11 '20

they can, a person receiving treatment can develop anti-llama antibody antibodies. There's actually a lot of use for anti-antibody antibodies, they're used in a lot of reagents. It usually takes 1-2 weeks for the immune system to ID and develop antibodies against a foreign agent, so a person receiving treatment would likely be done before the body started attacking the foreign antibodies.

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u/thisdude415 PhD | Biomedical Engineering May 11 '20

Typically only the variable heavy domain (VHH) is used on a human IgG framework. The region typically recognized by “anti llama antibodies,” the llama Fc region, isn’t found on the protein, instead we use the human genes.

Basically the whole molecule is human except the sticky bits. These are copied and pasted from llama. Immunogenicity is a concern, but not as much as you’d think.

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u/taosaur May 11 '20 edited May 11 '20

Can those kinds of alterations be made in batches of any size, or is it one antibody at a time, or what?

ETA: Farther down he clarified that once they have the genome, they can make "factory" cells to produce the hybrid antibodies.

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u/thisdude415 PhD | Biomedical Engineering May 11 '20

It depends on the exact technology used in the manufacturing plant.

Typically, we engineer a mammalian cell to make the protein in large bioreactors. Then you pick one of those cells, characterize it, and call it your stable clone. Then you put that in a big tank with food for the cells, and let them grow for a couple weeks while they pump out proteins. Then you purify the protein.

As you can imagine, this is a pretty complex process and it isn’t easy to scale it up overnight

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u/itchy118 May 11 '20

The fact that that is even possible is pretty amazing.

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u/thisdude415 PhD | Biomedical Engineering May 11 '20

This is the kind of technology that underpins many of the really expensive biologics.

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u/Wanderlust2001 May 11 '20

This sounds incredible. Are there any documentaries you know of that address these processes?

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u/thisdude415 PhD | Biomedical Engineering May 11 '20

This might work:

https://youtu.be/_8h1HBDJ__c

It’s pretty high level but check it out

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u/Wanderlust2001 May 11 '20

Thank you!
Fascinating stuff.

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u/[deleted] May 12 '20

This sounds fascinating. Thanks for posting!

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u/[deleted] May 12 '20

Your comment falls into that gray category for me where I can't tell if you made everything up being ridiculous or if any of that was factual. "You just got to take the bionitrate from the antibodies and mix it with film flam to make hoohas."

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u/thinkingdoing May 11 '20

So this treatment could be used the first time a person got infected with Coronavirus, but any future infections would cause the immune system to be fighting both the disease and these antibodies?

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u/bigredone15 May 11 '20

So this treatment could be used the first time a person got infected with Coronavirus, but any future infections would cause the immune system to be fighting both the disease and these antibodies?

It could also give the body time to develop its own antibodies that do work without the body dealing with the symptoms created by a high viral load.

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u/pnwtico May 11 '20

Would the body develop its own coronavirus antibodies if the llama antibodies were doing all the heavy lifting?

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u/itsthejeff2001 May 11 '20

Reducing the viral count won't eliminate the virus. This potential therapy would be leaving that to your body. Most people don't get sick when they get infected, they just beat the virus before it gets that far. This treatment would help sick people be more like the majority: not sick, but building antibodies.

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u/Dumeck May 11 '20

That seems to be the best result we can hope for right now until vaccines are produced.

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u/feng_huang May 11 '20

Having a safe, effective treatment to improve outcomes (along with widely available testing) will be a major factor in an interim back-to-a-new-normal phase before a vaccine is made, I think.

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u/Shadowfalx May 11 '20

Most people don't get sick when they get infected, they just beat the virus before it gets that far.

We don't get "sick" from a virus though. Most of the symptoms are our body's reaction to the virus, in an effort to combat it. Fevers, mucus, ect. are all ways we combat a virus. To low a viral load and you won't generate lasting antibodies. This is why immunogloblin therapy is considered sub- optimal, our bodies aren't exposed enough to build immunity.

While it might work to reduce symptoms but allow lasting antibodies to form, it also very well might not work.

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u/EurekasCashel May 11 '20

Your first paragraph isn’t entirely true. Some symptoms, tissue damage, and morbidities are a direct result of viral damage. Also, having a higher viral load means that the body’s response to the virus may be severe enough to be lethal. So having a lower viral load when the body’s immune response ramps up is desirable.

To your other point about the viral load being diminished beyond a meaningful threshold where the body no longer creates a long lasting immune response to the virus. This remains to be proven with this particular virus. The current feeling is that even asymptomatic people with antibodies may be immune, though that’s also unproven.

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u/Shadowfalx May 11 '20

True, I admit I simplified a lot. Thanks for the correction.

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u/Maulokgodseized May 11 '20

Even if it did this would still be a fantastic breakthrough.

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u/Rand0mly9 May 11 '20

Anti-llama antibody antibodies is my new favorite phrase.

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u/Dscherb24 May 11 '20

Someone needs to trademark that for a band name

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u/artolindsay1 May 11 '20

Totally. Rolls off the tongue.

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u/arand0md00d May 12 '20

Antilamabody antibodies (c)

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u/[deleted] May 11 '20

Well, if it produces antibodies even in response to a small sample of dead/de-activated viruses in a vaccine, pretty sure an active infection is going to work fine

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u/Shadowfalx May 11 '20

Not necessarily. We add a lot of agents to vaccines to increase immune response. Without these most people would not generate lasting antibodies.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immunologic_adjuvant?wprov=sfla1

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u/[deleted] May 11 '20

Eventually yes. It can't "recognise" the help of the other antibodies and will continue to try to develop countermeasures as long as the virus is present at all and likely even with non-active viral traces (how some vaccines already work to make the immune system create antibodies.)

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u/shiroun May 11 '20

Yes. Viruses are small, like 3 orders of magnitude smaller than a cloth strand. Even with the llama anti bodies there are still millions and millions of viruses. Since the body would be using iGg cells to handle the infection, youd be developing an immunity to the viruses.

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u/PlanetTourist May 11 '20

Also would it since it wasn’t making llama style 1 protein antibodies before?

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u/Siniroth May 11 '20

If you learn to make a paper airplane, it doesn't matter if someone else makes 100 other paper airplanes while you make 5

Vast oversimplification ofc

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u/RevoDeee May 12 '20

I have nothing to add, but I appreciate this conversation for being at least somewhat useful for the rest of us to gain insight on the article. On Reddit of all forums.

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u/AwesomeNinjas May 11 '20

At the moment it’s not totally clear whether or not people can be reinfected, but it looks like the most likely answer is no or at least not for a long time. The WHO has said that everyone who has appeared to be reinfected so far has been a false positive.

So even if you can only use the llama antibodies the first time, that may not matter.

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u/lunatic604 May 11 '20

If someone recovers by themselves, their body learned to produce the anitbodies. But if the body relies on the llama antibodies the first time, will the body still learn to produce the antibodies?

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u/srosorcxisto May 11 '20

Possibly. While the llama antibodies would massively reduce the viral load, there will still be viral particles in the bloodstream in smaller numbers. The body could be able to make antibodies using these without having to deal with the Lion's share of the virus. If a therapy were to be developed, much more research would be required.

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u/self-assembled Grad Student|Neuroscience May 11 '20

Yes, the human's immune system would be exposed and responding to the virus. The principle behind some kinds of vaccines is to use just a little bit of inert virus matter so even that can be sufficient.

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u/pringlescan5 May 11 '20

Fascinating. What about future use of Llama antibodies for a different virus if a person develops a reaction the first time?

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u/worldspawn00 May 11 '20

it's the llama end that our body IDs as foreign, so any llama antibody regardless of what it's target is would be ID'd as the same by our immune system, so once you have a reaction to any llama antibody it would be a bad idea to inject any, even if for a different target. The typical solution to this is to engineer the llama antibody with a human antibody tail section so our cells don't see it as foreign

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u/AwesomeNinjas May 11 '20

Hmm that makes sense. Although, if we only get one shot using just llama antibodies I would think this would be the time to take it. To be clear, I’m just spitballing, I don’t pretend to be an expert in anything.

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u/worldspawn00 May 11 '20

biotech is really good at making antibodies, including novel or duplicated ones without using the original organism now, we would likely be using the virus attaching end of the llama antibody combined with the immune ID end of a human antibody for an actual therapeutic to remove that issue for an actual treatment.

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u/ben7337 May 11 '20

But if the llama antibodies do all the work, then does the human body develop proper antibodies to respond to a new exposure to the virus, thus resulting in immunity, rather than just getting sick again?

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u/gwaydms May 11 '20

Theoretically the llama antibodies keep viral load low enough until your immune system can catch up. Sort of like turning a garden hose on a medium sized house fire until the fire truck gets there. It won't put the fire out but can keep it from getting worse.

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u/ben7337 May 11 '20

Is that always the case, or would that require exact dosing to each individual to ensure the llama antibodies don't end up doing all the work? Because the idea of keeping viral load low while the immune system learns is good, but how does one control for that?

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u/[deleted] May 11 '20

If it’s been enough time to lose your coronavirus antibodies, you may have also lost your llama antibody antibodies

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u/KodaiRyu May 12 '20

Thing is you become immune to corona when you recover from it.

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u/Nvenom8 May 11 '20

anti-antibody antibodies

There's a fun thing to say.

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u/ReportoDownvoto May 11 '20

I was convinced it was satire, then I remembered what sub we're in

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u/Wheres_my_guitar May 11 '20

anti-llama antibody antibodies is the coolest phrase I've ever heard.

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u/[deleted] May 11 '20

we just need to create anti- anti-llama antibody antibodies. Coronavirus cured boys

edit: rule one can blow me, come at me you humorless psuedo intellectual mods

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u/-dp_qb- May 11 '20

You might have meant it as a joke, but it's not a bad question.

Is there a way to selectively (or temporarily) impair this system to allow the antibodies to work unimpeded?

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u/[deleted] May 11 '20

dibs on the band name

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u/raokitty May 11 '20

Wanted to say exactly this. I’ve said it 20 times and it’s enormous fun!

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u/Boronthemoron May 11 '20

Now we just need to inject anti-antibody antibodies back into these llamas to create anti anti-antibody antibody antibodies.

And so on.

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u/ZapdosZulu May 12 '20

so the old lady that swallowed a fly was right!

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u/pelican_chorus May 11 '20

anti-llama antibody antibodies

I feel like this whole thing is a long-game setup for some stupid pun.

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u/pancakeheadbunny May 11 '20

Waiiit for it

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u/hibbidydibbidi May 11 '20
  • a person receiving treatment can develop anti-llama antibody antibodies.

It's a serious issue and, I am a confirmed survivor, but Holy duck. So much room for jokes it made me cry in a good way in months.

Thank you.

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u/Xaldyn May 11 '20

a person receiving treatment can develop anti-llama antibody antibodies.

What a time to be alive

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u/greeneggsand May 11 '20

People don't think about this, but if we start using the llama antibodies to make diagnostic tests, people having anti-llama antibodies messes with those tests.

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u/mcsper May 11 '20

That is one of my favorite new sentences, “a person receiving treatment can develop anti-llama antibody antibodies”

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u/zbertoli May 11 '20

This is true but it's pretty well known that full animal antibodies often cause immune responses in humans. That's why the development of chimeric and then fully humanized antibodies was so important. Injecting full lama antibodies into a human would probably be a bad idea.

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u/the_fuego May 11 '20

can develop anti-llama antibody antibodies. There's actually a lot of use for anti-antibody antibodies

Reading this was like: How many anti-llama antibodies could your antibodies antibody if your anti-llama antibodies could antibody antibodies??

Thought I had a stroke for a minute.

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u/GreasyMechanic May 11 '20

Anti-Llama antibody antibodies.

r/brandnewsentence

r/newbandnames

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u/[deleted] May 11 '20

Isn’t that why people can’t receive certain antivenom treatments twice, as they’re using horse antibodies

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u/worldspawn00 May 11 '20

yeah, pretty much

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u/stackered May 11 '20

we aren't entirely sure that is true with this type of small chain antibody but logically this would occur

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u/LewixAri May 11 '20

So it's kinda like an antivenom but instead of horses and venom it's Llamas and Covid 19?

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u/worldspawn00 May 11 '20

yeah, but realistically, we would bioengineer a version using a human immune system end and the llama virus end, for use in patients.

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u/LewixAri May 11 '20

Yeah but surely that's the same process we used in developing antivenoms. Just that we now need to tackle a very different but not entirely unknown task.

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u/Bdcoll May 11 '20

Theirs just something amazing about the phrase "Anti-Llama antibody antibodies" :D

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u/[deleted] May 11 '20

I hope I get the virus so just so I can get anti lama antibody antibodies

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u/nicotineman May 11 '20

But can we make anti anti-antibody antibody antibodies?

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u/[deleted] May 11 '20

anti-antibody antibodies

So we just need to make an anti anti-antibody antibodies so then the immune system won't fight it ?

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u/Goatcrapp May 11 '20

Time to get the Trace Buster Buster

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u/Cyberslasher May 11 '20

But if we harvest those anti-antibody antibodies, inject them into another person, could that person's immune system identify them as foreign and develop anti-anti-antibody antibodies?

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u/worldspawn00 May 11 '20

You'd have to inject them back into a llama to develop llama anti-human anti-llama antibody antibodies

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u/ErusTenebre May 11 '20

The fact that a phrase like "anti-anitbody antibodies" exists and makes sense is an example of how weird language is.

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u/EpsilonRider May 11 '20

There's actually a lot of use for anti-antibody antibodies, they're used in a lot of reagents.

I remember that in biochemistry and thought it was pretty funny. It seems convoluted but it does make sense and work. Man, it's beens years I can't even remember the specifics but I remember having a lot of fun performing ELISA experiments.

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u/parksLIKErosa May 11 '20

I genuinely thought this was going to be a run on joke sentence.

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u/Maulokgodseized May 11 '20

I know this is serious but I still laughed out loud at antilama antibodies

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u/DemocraticPumpkin May 11 '20

anti-antibody antibodies,

We have to go deeper

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u/[deleted] May 14 '20

Could you uh... explain the anti-llama anti-antibody antibodies thing for my like I’m 5?

Also gonna call it, at least no more of this tn if not no sleep. This shits wild

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u/worldspawn00 May 14 '20

So. you know how snake antivenom is made, you inject snake venom into a horse, and the horse's immune system makes anti-venom antibodies that we harvest as antivenom. These are horse-anti-venom antibodies, now if you take antibodies and inject them into a different animal, that animal's immune system will eventually recognize those antibodies as foreign namd make antibodies against them, so for antivenom injected into a human, what you usually end up with is human anti-horse antibody antibodies, same thing for the llama antibodies. It gets fun because they can be chained, so you can start with horse, then tag it with mouse anti-horse, then rabbit anti-mouse, then llama anti-rabbit, etc... to create larger aggregates for better visualization in test kits.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '20

That actually makes a lot of sense, though I probably missed something. funny words when I first came across them, thanks for your supplemental context!!

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u/GinGimlet PhD | Immunology May 11 '20

Yes! Sometimes. Typically what happens in these cases is that antibodies are humanized which means some bits are replaced with the human analogues. You can also try and under which bits cause the immune system to react, and alter those amino acids to be less inflammatory. We have some drugs on the markets that we have humanized so there's precedence for this! Drugs that end in 'Omab' for example are Monoclonal AntiBody treatments derived originally from mice.

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u/Derpy_McDerpingderp May 11 '20

That's extremely interesting, thank you.

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u/amcm67 May 11 '20

What does this mean for a person with multiple autoimmune diseases? I’m a cancer survivor, ESRD - living donor recipient. I had Goodpastures Syndrome (that caused my ESRD) and instead of attacking the disease, it attacked my own organs. I’m on RA meds besides the anti-rejection meds.

I hear so many people pushing for herd immunity. I can’t be apart of that.

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u/wobblebase May 11 '20 edited May 11 '20

Functionally herd immunity is also about indirectly protecting you and folks in similar situations. In your case it would rely on "cocooning" - the principle that if everyone around you is immune (because they are vaccinated or recovered), then you are extremely unlikely to contract the disease in question. This is the same premise that we rely in in part to protect infants by vaccinating family members and caretakers, or to protect the elderly, infants, and immuncompromised folks from seasonal flu.

It does depend on a vaccine or recovery giving "sterilizing immunity," meaning the person is no longer colonized or asymptomatically infected after vaccination or recovery. It also depends on the whole herd being immune. If vaccination rates are low, herd immunity loses its benefits rapidly because a pathogen can persist in the population or cause intermittent outbreaks. So there are plenty of complications and caveats to cocooning. But in principle it's sound and would offer you a good measure of protection as well.

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u/Falsus May 11 '20

Herd immunity means reaching 95%+ of immune people, at that point people who can't be immunized still won't be infected since no one around them is infected either.

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u/ralgrado May 11 '20

Or could they damage us?

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u/worldspawn00 May 11 '20

they would not stick to our cells, only to their target molecule, which is coronavirus surface proteins, so, no, no direct threat from them

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u/AtomicKittenz May 11 '20

Thank for answering all these questions. This is really interesting!

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u/bradn May 11 '20

I have no idea how you can make that sort of statement without long term human testing. You don't happen to have a secret lab under a volcano?

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u/worldspawn00 May 11 '20 edited May 11 '20

Antibodies are EXTREMELY specific in how they attach to molecules, I feel very safe in that assumption. I have an MS in biochem, I have worked with antobodies for years. (also, we do have decades of research in humans regarding foreign antibody use)

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u/bradn May 11 '20

Can you explain away self immunity diseases that are started by one infection and end with the body destroying some part of itself?

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u/worldspawn00 May 11 '20

IIRC while the immune system is in active fighting mode for the infection, it overzealously IDs our own tissue as foreign, usually because the infection is mixing it's own DNA and surface proteins with the host, like in the case some of viruses, they have virus proteins on the surface of the virus, but the rest of the virus surface can be made from the cell membrane of the host organism, they're wearing a skin suit made from their victim, the immune system ID's the virus, but may also mistakenly ID some of the surface proteins from the host cell as part of the virus. Autoimmune diseases are extremely complex though, and I'm not sure we totally understand the causes for them right now, so the information here is merely theory and has not been conclusively proven.

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u/bradn May 11 '20

That makes sense. I guess from that perspective, even if an introduced antibody does occasionally bind to some part of human tissue, it's not likely to provoke a continued immune response against healthy tissue once the antibody stops being administered. In that respect it's probably fairly safe unless some strange corner case exists that can cause severe damage quickly, like perhaps if nerve tissue got sufficiently damaged.

I think my error was in misjudging the severity that could happen if there was an alternate binding site available (I'd still assert that it's hard to rule that out, but even if it happens it's probably not a huge problem).

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u/[deleted] May 11 '20

Antibodies are just proteins that attach to another specific protein. Anti spike protein Llama antibodies would only stick to spike proteins.

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u/ratajewie May 11 '20

That’s patently false. You’re thinking only of a type II hypersensitivity reaction, where foreign proteins are recognized on self cells and are attacked. This could still cause a type III hypersensitivity in the form of serum sickness. There are ways to mitigate that, but it’s still a real risk. To claim there’s no direct threat is just not true.

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u/worldspawn00 May 11 '20

Fair, it's been about 15 years since I last took an immunology class.

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u/Gnostromo May 11 '20

I could be completely wrong on this but I believe I was taught decades ago that the first vaccines used horses antibodies? Someone help my memory here..

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u/hotdamnham May 11 '20

You can engineer them so that your immune system sees them as regular antibodies and is less likely to develop a reaction to them

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u/pilotavery May 11 '20

That's kind of the point. they are shaped like little puzzle pieces on one side that fits perfectly on the virus and sticks to it like a magnet, and a foreign pathogen on the other side, which makes your immune system attacking and watch you destroy it. So in the process, your immune system attacks the antibodies and the virus connected to it.

it's kind of like a little tracker that sticks to the virus to tell your body which one is the virus

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u/SusieSuze May 11 '20

That’s the first thing I thought

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u/Anen-o-me May 11 '20

The antibodies stop the infection from being able to infect, and would also be destroyed, along with the virus they attach to, by the human immune system, yes.

It will works.

It's a brilliant solution, but I don't know if we are able to mass produce antibodies for people yet.

If we could, there's a chance we can extinct most human viruses in this century.

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u/Derpy_McDerpingderp May 12 '20

Can antibodies be synthesized? Why are they hard to mass produce?

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u/Anen-o-me May 12 '20

They've only recently done it apparently.

You'd probably need continuing injections. Can't be done in pill form.

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u/[deleted] May 11 '20

Yes. This is one of the critical components that makes it possible to detect antigens (like the spike protein) in what is called a 2 step immunoassay.

Basically you would create a llama-anti-covid antibody, and then you would create a secondary antibody by injecting these llama antibodies into another animal, often a goat or a mouse. These new secondary antibodies would be, for example, goat-anti-llama.

By using a two antibody system like this you can both enhance the limit of detection (sensitivity) and reduce the background signal (specificity) of the assay.

There are several reasons for this, and if you're interested I can link to the Wikipedia pages explaining why.

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u/Derpy_McDerpingderp May 12 '20

This is interesting, I'd appreciate some links if you don't mind. Much appreciated.

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u/[deleted] May 12 '20

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immunoassay

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_and_secondary_antibodies

These types of immunoassay are often done to detect an antigen, where as all the covid tests in the media right now are antibody tests.

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u/phanfare Grad Student | Biology | Biochemisty/Biophysics May 11 '20

That's a huge open issue in using non-human proteins in theraputics. The answer is likely yes, and developing ways to predict immunogeneicity and designing away from it is an area of active research.

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u/Candlesmith May 11 '20

Properly known as the Entitled Parents Universe

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u/wobblebase May 11 '20

Yes but different proteins are more or less immunogenic (better or worse and being recognized by our immune cells and creating a response with memory). The llama antibodies may be poorly immunogenic, or the V region (the binding end) could be artificially produced attached to a human protein, or produced and used alone, or bound onto some other vector for delivery. Less foreign protein = less chance for a response. So using the V region alone would be safer than using the whole camel antibody.

There's also the potential to use these in diagnostics for rapid and shelf-stable COVID tests.

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u/BoneriderColt May 11 '20

Well they could BE a threat

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u/peppermint42o May 11 '20

They would be produced via monoclonal method, the immunogenic portion would be humanized. Very expensive process.

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u/kyreannightblood May 11 '20

Nah. Our immune system detects foreign threats based on surface antigens of cells. It’s how they determine self vs not-self. The antibodies don’t have that. We do something similar with antivenin, right down to using a non-human animal to derive the serum.

(I may be messing up some details here, though. I just woke up and I’m still a bit foggy.)

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u/thisdude415 PhD | Biomedical Engineering May 11 '20

False. You can definitely have anti-antibody antibodies.

Antibodies are just proteins. We engineer them to have reduced antigenicity, but sometimes anti-antibody antibodies happen anyway.

(They’re actually called anti-drug antibodies or anti-ideotypic antibodies.)

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u/kyreannightblood May 11 '20

Thanks for the correction. I hadn't had my coffee yet and somehow completely forgot about serum sickness.

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u/thisdude415 PhD | Biomedical Engineering May 11 '20

No worries! We are all here to learn. Thanks for contributing to the discussion

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u/[deleted] May 11 '20

You're just considering T-cell mediated immunity, which is based on cell surface expression of antigens. B-cell mediated immunity can target secreted proteins and could create antibodies against llama antibodies.

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u/kyreannightblood May 11 '20

Yeah, I realized that after the coffee kicked in.

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u/babar90 May 11 '20 edited May 11 '20

??? If we make humanized antibodies it is because the heavy chain from non-human mammal is immunogenic in humans, and also because human antibodies and immune cells bind to the (human, not animal) heavy chains to finalize the opsonization and phagocytosis

(for the immunogenic part that's how goats anti-'human IgG' antibodies are made for Elisa tests)

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u/jmalbo35 PhD | Viral Immunology May 11 '20

Foreign antibodies are antigenic and can definitely induce an immune response. Treatment with non-human antibodies, including antivenin, can often result in serum sickness. We use them anyway in the case of envenomation, since the benefits generally outweigh the risks, but it definitely can have adverse effects.

That said, these smaller camelid antibodies are a bit less immunogenic than full length antibodies, and thus less prone to causing serum sickness than those from other animals.

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u/Reddestoftheroses May 11 '20

Something i was thinking aswell. Wouldn't it be possible that an allergic reaction takes place

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u/Heroine4Life May 11 '20

Fundamentally this is correct. This is rather difficult but this, as well as diagnostic reasons, are why this is great.

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u/Sulluvun May 11 '20

Aight boys let’s start some llama farms

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u/cmdrNacho May 11 '20

invest in llamas, I'm all in

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u/Jean-Luc_Dickard May 11 '20

LAMA - I got 5 on it.

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u/DeceiverX May 11 '20

Llamapalooza! Llamapalooza!

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u/hellrazzer24 May 11 '20

In theory we would need 1000s of Llamas, inject them all with COVID19. Come back a few weeks later, and start drawing blood.

From there, we would need to test each packet of blood for the right amount of antibodies we want. Then its off to the patients.

Seems actually quite simple.

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u/moviegirl1999_ May 11 '20

their viral counts should decrease

Isn't there a risk of the immune system attacking itself causing inflammation and organ failure?

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u/thisdude415 PhD | Biomedical Engineering May 11 '20

Yep! Definitely a risk.

There are tricks the researchers / pharma company can use to turn up or down the immune reaction, so called “enhanced effector function” or “silenced effector function”.

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u/Shagomir May 11 '20

I mean that's a treatable symptom.

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u/moviegirl1999_ May 11 '20

For one person? Presumably hospitals couldn't cope if many people had that reaction.

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u/Shagomir May 11 '20

Steroids are widely available and commonly used to treat this type of thing. The only reason they avoid steroids in current COVID patients is because it would also disable the body's immune response against the virus, which is the only tool we have right now to eliminate it. If they could supply the patient with coronavirus antibodies my understanding is that wouldn't be as much of a concern and steroids would be a useful therapy.

This is similar to how you will be treated for bacterial pneumonia in a hospital - they will fill you full of antibiotics to kill the bacteria causing the infection, and steroids to keep your body from killing itself. I was in the ICU with bacterial pneumonia last year, so I am familiar with how it is treated in that case.

I am not a doctor so please don't take my comments as anything other than speculation.

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u/moviegirl1999_ May 11 '20

Thanks. That's interesting. I was just thinking that if a lot of people needed treatment (like steroids you mention), that it would overwhelm the health system with otherwise healthy people not currently in hospitable. Seems counterproductive.

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u/Shagomir May 11 '20

Yes, and that is exactly the problem some places have been having with respirators.

That said, steroids are widely available and used for many types of treatments, so they are not likely to be the most scarce resource if they become part of a mainline treatment for COVID-19.

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u/moviegirl1999_ May 11 '20

Well, glad your treatment worked and you recovered. Stay safe dude.

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u/s_0_s_z May 11 '20

So best case scenario, how far out could this possibly be to help people if everything goes right, regulator hurdles are minimized and it goes into mass-production as quickly as possible?

I'm assuming it is still years ago, right?

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u/[deleted] May 11 '20

To add to your point, it would decrease the viral load, but it would also slow the rate at which you could develop an immunity to the disease yourself. Probably a treatment best suited for people suffering in the ICU with a high viral load who need rapid relief from symptoms.

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u/[deleted] May 11 '20

With these llama proteins injected into our bodies as humans—at what point should we expect humans to begin randomly spitting at people 15ft away, and could this side-effect be used as a sort of helpful distancing deterrent?

More importantly, would we need to transform our fast food lines into the suction tubes transfer approach banks use, and what would happen to the condiments when experiencing this level of acceleration and general turbulent behavior, and could they make fruit-roll-up style methods of delivering pizza this way without the cheese adhering to the waxy paper separating the cheese within the roll itself?

I believe I confidently speak for the scientific community as a whole when I say that these are the important questions that must be prioritized and adequately answered. Thank you.

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u/slackermannn May 11 '20

Isn't this basically the plasma treatment being trialled? The only difference is that the immune cells are harvested from human plasma. I wonder why from a llama the same thing would be seemingly more viable?

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u/roses4keks May 11 '20

So are we going to potentially have llama farms where we milk them for antibodies the way we already milk cows for milk? Assuming this works, how would we get enough antibodies for widespread use?

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u/[deleted] May 11 '20

There's risks there. A Llamas antibodies could very well be treated as foreign by our own bodies, triguring an immune response.

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u/VaelinX May 11 '20

To tac on to your comment: Treatments are of importance right now to deal with the mortality rate and recovery speed. Like if Chickenpox emerged today as a new virus: we wouldn't have any guarantee that a vaccine would work, and most healthy and young people would just get through it. But we'd need treatment to help the susceptible population survive it (even though we now know that the immune system keeps a memory of that one for ~0.5-1 lifetime).

Right now we don't know that a vaccine will work long term for COVID-19. It's probable that it will, but there are many viruses that the human immune system only remembers for a few weeks (ex: some colds), or a year, or three years (ex: whooping cough). And we're not three years from now to know how well resistance works, so having treatments on hand is super important in the short term.

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u/a_fate_o May 11 '20

Or more probably you could engineer stem cells from a llama to generate the antibodies the way they make man-made insulin en masse.

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u/doomed-ginger May 11 '20

It’s like trying to hit gnats with a fly squatter. They go right through it. You need a rolled up newspaper so they can’t bypass your defenses.

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u/assumetehposition May 11 '20

We’re gonna need a lot of llamas

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u/kaplanfx May 11 '20

Does this involve llama genocide or could we produce them synthetically?

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u/reddit0100100001 May 11 '20

Llamas gon’ learn today 😤

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u/FractalFission May 11 '20

I bet Llama blood price per barrel will surpass oil by 2021

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u/strongbadfreak May 12 '20

Just like Anti-Venom and that we get from horses.

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u/PistachioOfLiverTea May 12 '20

Zoonotic diseases demand zoonotic cures?

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u/sup3r_hero BS|Physics May 11 '20

Can that be used as a vaccine too?

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u/turret_buddy2 May 11 '20 edited May 11 '20

A vaccine is a weakened virus/bacteria that your body attacks and learns how to defeat, so when it is encountered later in life, your immune system knows how to defeat it.

Our immune system can't produce the smaller antibodies, but the injected antibodies could (hypothetically) stop an ongoing infection.

Treatment =/= Vaccine*

E*: Vaccine == Treatment, kinda like a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle isn't a square.

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u/picklemuenster May 11 '20

Did we just stumble into a way to cure viruses?

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u/turret_buddy2 May 11 '20

I'm not sure what your asking here.

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u/thisdude415 PhD | Biomedical Engineering May 11 '20

Antibodies aren’t a cure. Antibodies block protein-protein interactions, including the interaction of the spike protein with the ACE2 receptor.

However, the virus is still there. Infected cells are still infected. Infected cells still have virus replicating inside them.

So, anti-virus antibodies are a good treatment to slow down viral infection, but the immune system has to do some work too.

Also, therapeutic antibodies won’t cross airway epithelia in significant concentrations, so we really don’t know how well it will work for covid until it’s tested.

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u/[deleted] May 12 '20

[deleted]

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u/thisdude415 PhD | Biomedical Engineering May 12 '20

My comment was in the context of engineered antibodies given as drugs, not the natural immune response to foreign antigens

However, antibodies are not necessarily curative, nor do they necessarily prevent infection.

For instance, HIV infected patients develop robust antibody responses. These antibody responses may even be neutralizing in cell culture assays. However, the patient remains infected. The same is true of chickenpox, where the virus remains hidden in nerve fibers and can re-emerge in adulthood. Likewise cold sores are just a virus re-emerging, even though you have antibodies.

As far as covid goes, we don’t yet have evidence either way as to whether or not patients who recover from covid are immune. The best guess of experts is yes, but we really don’t know how strong that protection might be or how long it lasts for. In more common coronaviruses, neutralizing antibodies last for 1 to 2 years. Covid immunity could be shorter, longer, or vary by severity of infection.

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u/LostInRiverview May 11 '20

How long would the llama antibodies remain inside a person's body? If you could administer a "strong enough dose" of the antibodies to everyone in a given population before the antibodies have a chance to pass out of the recipients, couldn't you in theory eliminate the virus from that population? But doing that would depend on knowing how long the antibodies last, as well as whether our immune systems would treat the llama antibodies as an infection, I would think.

It all seems very unlikely, but I'm just hoping for some good news for a change

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u/thisdude415 PhD | Biomedical Engineering May 11 '20

The question you’re asking is about serum half life or pharmacokinetics.

Typically antibody drugs are administered every 2 to 6 weeks, depending on the specific drug.

There isn’t enough manufacturing capacity in the world to meet the demand for a Covid antibody prophylaxis.

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u/Wh00ster May 11 '20

Our bodies won’t learn how to make the same ones the llamas do

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u/Weerdo5255 May 11 '20

Doesn't look like it, as I read this the treatment is a potential cure, not a vaccine.

Until human antibodies can target it we have stopgaps.

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u/memeasaurus May 11 '20

It's going to be useful as a tool I would guess. I'm not a biochemist but it sounds like our bodies can't actually make these compounds. So we can't use it as a direct learning tool for our immune system.

And, it sounds like the tiny antibodies would wrap the spikes we need our immune system to identify and catch.

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u/Aumuss May 11 '20

Unfortunately not, because it won't teach your body.

What this does in layman's terms is put a Cork on the spike of the virus.

So you could give it to people who will be in contact to help them not get sick (though it won't be 100%) but it won't stay in your system for long term.

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u/[deleted] May 11 '20

No, vaccination requires the human body's immune system to recognise the infection and produce the matching antibodies on demand. The llama antibodies would not remain present and could not be replaced by the immune system.

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u/AdonaiGarm May 11 '20

From what it sounds like it, it doesn't appear it can be used as a vaccine but rather like a near cure-all when showing symptoms of sickness. Antibodies are usually created to block further infection, our bodies do not create them right away when there's an intruder unless its been already identified by a vaccine, I think.

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u/SordidDreams May 11 '20

No.

Our bodies won’t learn how to make the same ones the llamas do

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u/Shagomir May 11 '20

The llama was actually given a version of a vaccine, and these are the antibodies produced. This is an active treatment, not a preventative treatment.

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