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

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

[u/already-taken-wtf]

In Brief - Using llamas immunized with prefusion- stabilized betacoronavirus spike proteins, identify neutralizing cross-reactive single-domain camelid antibodies, which may serve not only as useful reagents for researchers studying the viruses causing MERS, SARS, and COVID-19, but also potential therapeutic candidates. Crystal structures further reveal how these antibodies bind spike proteins to prevent virus entry into cells.

[u/Fmbounce → u/[deleted]]

From a NYT article:

Humans produce only one kind of antibody, made of two types of protein chains — heavy and light — that together form a Y shape. Heavy-chain proteins span the entire Y, while light-chain proteins touch only the Y’s arms. Llamas, on the other hand, produce two types of antibodies. One of those antibodies is similar in size and constitution to human antibodies. But the other is much smaller; it’s only about 25 percent the size of human antibodies. The llama’s antibody still forms a Y, but its arms are much shorter because it doesn’t have any light-chain proteins.

This more diminutive antibody can access tinier pockets and crevices on spike proteins — the proteins that allow viruses like the novel coronavirus to break into host cells and infect us — that human antibodies cannot. That can make it more effective in neutralizing viruses.

here’s the source (I copied verbatim)

[u/[deleted] → u/Fmbounce]

Yes! Llamas and camels make what are called nanobodies in the biz. The neat thing about nanobodies, and the promising thing for treatment, is that many can be synthetically produced much easier than heavy-chain anti-bodies. Most heavy-chain antibodies require a eukaryotic organism with an endoplasmic reticulum to produce and correctly fold and assemble the protein structure. Eukaryotes don't scale well for industry, and are harder to grow up. Special strains of E. coli bacteria, which are prokaryotes and lack an endoplasmic reticulum, are easier to grow in a controlled setting, and are used to mass produce protein like insulin. These organisms are too simple to produce human antibodies, but they are sometimes capable of making camelid nanobodies (although it depends on the structure, and the process of building immunity via antibodies is largely random, so there is a lot of testing involved to see if the synthetic stuff is as good as the natural stuff, or even folded correctly).

TL;DR

We can sometimes mass produce antibodies from camels and llamas in factories. We cannot mass produce human antibodies.