Time for a different type of HERD IMMUNITY!๐
Last week it was reported that a biopharmaceutical company in the US are using genetically modified cows to produce antibodies that could help us to fight COVID-19. I was intrigued when I saw the headline so had to do some more digging.
As coronavirus marches around the globe, a sleepy town on the rugged Maine coast has become an unlikely nucleus in researchers’ efforts to combat the disease, known as COVID-19. The Jackson Laboratory, a is rushing to produce stocks of a transgenic animal that scientists hope will help them to understand the virus.
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So what makes cows so special?
Cows make good antibody factories, and not just because they have more blood than smaller animals engineered to synthesize human versions of the proteins. Their blood can also contain twice as many antibodies per millilitre as human blood
Well, they actually produce a load of antibodies. Because they have more blood than humans but they can also produce twice as many per millilitre compared to humans! And they produce a wider variety of antibodies - more on that in my next few posts - so increasing the chances that one of them will work when trying to fight the coronavirus.
Ok... so cows might have more antibodies but how is that going to help us?
There is something called artificial passive immunity. This uses externally produced antibodies to fight off disease. Here the cows can produce human antibodies on mass. Those antibodies have been shown to have positive effects so far in animals that have been infected with the virus. ⚠️ PSA - this data has not yet been peer-reviewed or published yet. These antibodies are scheduled to be tested in human clinical trials ๐ซthis summer to test their effectiveness at preventing COVID-19.
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It will be interesting to see more data and results from this company. But it sounds like another promising angle. Although so far no antibodies generated by animals have been approved to treat any disease.๐ฆ
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Let's see what their next moo-ve is! Sorry I had to ๐
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