There was a comment discussion on “plasma therapy” and the use of survivor antibodies to kick-start a patient’s immune system. Cool interview on, maybe CNN, with the CEO/Researcher of a bio-company.
His company mass produces antibodies in the lab. They have a library of human antibodies and they can select a handful depending on the target virus receptors and other details, and then mass produce a cocktail of “synthetically reproduced” human antibodies for therapy. The interviewee told of the first (possibly only) use on a doctor dying of Ebola in a rural hospital during the last outbreak. Within an hour, the guy was up and walking.
Apparently, the injection contains a boatload of antibodies and that the immune system can determine which antibodies are actually working and begin replicating its own.
One shoul search, read, and then post… keywords: monoclonal antibody, triclonal.
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Here is a mixed bag story on anti-body testing. It may not be in line with what you are talking about, but the information may be important – IMHO
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/14/health/coronavirus-antibody-tests-scientists/index.html
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There is an interesting nugget in that article.
Apparently the antibody tests are having trouble distinguishing between the novel coronavirus and some of the coronaviruses that cause less severe colds.
That may explain why some people have mild or no symptoms from Covid 19. They may have some degree of protection due to having had a similar cold virus and the antibodies they developed fighting that cold are close enough to also protect them from Covid 19
That is encouraging as my grandchildren have been very efficient in bring home every cold virus in existence.
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It’s their job. If you never sit in a room with a kid, you’ll die healthy.
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One thing I took away from the interview, was he kept saying “antibody vaccine” and I was left with the impression that, even without an infection, your immune system will recognize a “foreign antibody” as a tool that it can reproduce later and thus you get some long term protection.
So what do you know, or can surmise, about just being shot full of, say Ebola, antibodies rather than a weakened or dead virus?
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I think there is some confusion there.
An antibody is a protein that binds to a virus particle (or other antigen) and either directly blocks its ability to invade cells or flags it for absorption and destruction by cells in the immune system.
Antibodies can be made by your own body in response to an antigen(an irritant that your body recognizes as not you) they can be imported from someone else who has already recovered from the disease, and they can even be manufactured artificially and injected.
Injecting an antibody, either from someone else or an artificial source) does not stimulate your body to copy it.
Viral vaccines are antigens that are either part of a real virus particle or artificially made molecules that look to the body like the virus. These stimulate the manufacture of antibodies by the body the same way that being infected does.
Injected antibodies are treatments to keep you alive until the body has time to ramp up production of your own antibodies, but they don’t last forever.
Hope that helps.
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Okay, it was one ear on the TV, and the mind on a textfest with daughter when the interview was on, but this https://www.cell.com/trends/microbiology/pdf/S0966-842X(15)00154-7.pdf was the gist of it all.
I sometimes regret not having taken a biology course beyond 10th grade frog mutilation, but really, physics doesn’t stink, slime, or wiggle.
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Good article. though I am not convinced just yet. The problem is how you would know that’s what happened.
Monoclonal antibodies are passive immunity but if they keep you alive long enough for your immune system to respond, you will make antibodies. SO how do you know if the monoclonal antibodies primed your immune system or if it was just your body catching up?
Anyway, a lot has happened in the field of immunology since the last course I took. Especially since AIDS came along. In many ways, the best thing that ever happened to cancer victims was AIDS.
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Maybe next year the cure for the common cold will come from all of this?
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Lots of questions still need answered. Lots of studies still need done. I am beginning to think that, unlike the annual flu vaccine, there may not be a one-size fits most solution to this virus.
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