Importance of detecting neutralizing antibody response in recovered COVID-19 patients.

In an article published today in Cell Host and Microbe, Professor Kanta  Subbarao stressed the importance of detecting a neutralizing antibody response in recovered COVID-19 patients, and of studies of COVID-19 vaccines in animal models.

Neutralising antibodies prevent infection by binding to a virus and blocking their ability to infect. After an infection, a host can produce neutralising antibodies to protect against future

"The speed with which SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has spread around the world and its toll in numbers of cases, severe illness, and death has been staggering,"

Says,Kanta Subbarao, Professor, University of Melbourne infection.

Professor Subbarao was the Chief of the Emerging Respiratory Viruses Section of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases at the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease at the US National Institutes of Health during the SARS outbreak in 2002-2003, and was central to an important discovery of how neutralising antibodies protect from infection.

She also explained the crucial discovery that the 'spike' protein of the virus induced neutralising antibodies, and the importance of animal trials of several SARS vaccine candidates.

Coronavirus particles have a corona (crown) of spike proteins that allow the virus to attach and enter cells.

"The 'spike' proteins of both SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 are related and they attach to the same molecule called ACE 2 on human cells to infect people. We now also know through animal experiments with SARS-CoV-2 that neutralising antibodies protect from reinfection," Professor Subbarao said.

These is the interview of Professor Subbarao.

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