The drugmaker Pfizer recently announced that vaccinated people are likely to need a booster shot to be effectively protected against new variants of covid-19 and that the company would apply for Food and Drug Administration emergency use authorization for the…
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Striking increase in SARS-CoV-2 antibodies seen with prime dose AstraZeneca vaccine followed by Pfizer-BioNTech
Researchers in Germany have provided evidence that a booster shot of a messenger RNA (mRNA)-based coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine following prime immunization with AstraZeneca’s adenoviral vector-based vaccine is sufficient to achieve high levels of neutralizing antibodies against severe acute…
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What are the challenges of SARS-CoV-2 serosurveillance in COVID-19 vaccine recipients?
Over a year on since the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic began, evidence from studies suggests that the deployment of physical preventive measures, including social distancing, lockdowns, face mask usage, and handwashing, are not fully effective in preventing or mitigating…
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Low on antibodies, blood cancer patients can fight off COVID-19 with T cells
Antibodies aren’t the only immune cells needed to fight off COVID-19—T cells are equally important and can step up to do the job when antibodies are depleted, suggests a new Penn Medicine study of blood cancer patients with COVID-19 published…
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New collaborative effort to produce anti-HIV monoclonal antibodies
The Hotung Molecular Immunology group at St George’s, University of London has partnered with Leaf Expression Systems, a contract development and manufacturing organization, specializing in plant-based expression and production of proteins, to explore the feasibility of producing anti-HIV monoclonal antibodies…
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Novel mRNA delivery vehicle provides alternative to LNPs for SARS-CoV-2 vaccines
Researchers in the United States have developed an alternative messenger RNA (mRNA) delivery platform to the lipid nanoparticles that are currently used in vaccines against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) – the agent that causes coronavirus disease 2019…
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New machine learning method for designing more effective antibody drugs
Antibodies are not only produced by our immune cells to fight viruses and other pathogens in the body. For a few decades now, medicine has also been using antibodies produced by biotechnology as drugs. This is because antibodies are extremely…
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Broadly cross-reactive antibody to SARS-CoV-2 RBD with robust resistance to mutational escape
The current pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has triggered an intensive hunt for effective new and repurposed antivirals and antibodies, for prevention and treatment of the infection. A new preprint…
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Researchers explore an inhalable SARS-CoV-2 nanobody therapy
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the world’s third major coronavirus outbreak. To date, the SARS-CoV-2 has infected over 135 million lives and caused over 2.9 million deaths. Even…
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Researchers discover a new monoclonal antibody that is effective against SARS-CoV-2 variants
A new monoclonal antibody targets a particular region of the receptor-binding domain (RBD) on the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). This region is usually not accessible to immune cells, which may be why it has broad neutralizing capabilities….
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