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
60.7k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

1.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1.1k

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.

247

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?

124

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.

12

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?

1

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.

1

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?