They have proteins for antibody therapy that could stop COVID-19 infections.
Llamas are good for many things. Some people actually eat them, (although known to be gamey), their wool can make nice sweaters, a bit of llama fat has been known to create functional candles, and their dung can be used to light a fire. Not bad for one animal.
Now this long-necked creature could be giving us something new and extremely useful: a treatment for the coronavirus.
The results of research done as team work between the University of Texas at Austin, the National Institutes of Health, and Ghent University in Belgium are still under peer review, however it looks like the findings could be promising.
Different From a Vaccine
Researchers uncovered some antibodies present in llamas that could be very helpful. The animals possess an antibody that stops a certain protein in the coronavirus from breaking into our cells and above all, infecting them. Basically, we’re dealing with some llama bodyguards that can help us keep the bad guys out.
Does it work like a vaccine? It is similar, but it is a different method of treatment.
Jason McLellan, associate professor of molecular biosciences at UT Austin and co-senior author of the study explains it.
“Vaccines have to be given a month or two before infection to provide protection,” he says. “With antibody therapies, you’re directly giving somebody the protective antibodies and so, immediately after treatment, they should be protected. The antibodies could also be used to treat somebody who is already sick to lessen the severity of the disease.”
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A vaccine prevents you from falling sick with a certain disease. It works by introducing a bit of the weakened or dead virus into your system. Your body is then stimulated to form antibodies to fight the virus, and you become immune to the disease, without ever catching it.
The treatment discovered in connection with llamas provides patients with extra antibodies to fight off the live coronavirus should it ever enter their body. Antibodies are part of your immune system that work to attack invading antigens. Humans would be injected with live llamas antibodies, or something similar. These injections would then boost the human immune system with armies of antibodies ready to prevent COVID-19 infections.
How does it all work on a cellular level? It’s all about spike proteins.
Spike Proteins
The protein that causes the COVID-19 is called a spike protein. The spike proteins of the novel coronavirus are what give the virus a crown-like appearance under a microscope. This protein allows the virus to break into host cells, (our cells), and start the infection by binding to the human cell receptor. This then fuses with the human cell membrane. In doing so, the genome of the coronavirus enters the human cell and starts its infection.
By stopping the spike protein in its tracks, the llama antibodies could prevent infection from happening.
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Researchers are excited at the prospect their findings could be posing.
“I thought this would be a small side project,” said one of the study’s co-authors, Dorien De Vlieger, a postdoctoral scientist at Ghent University’s Vlaams Institute for Biotechnology (VIB).
“Now the scientific impact of this project became bigger than I could ever expect. It’s amazing how unpredictable viruses can be.”
For more detail on this study and what was involved, click here.
