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Last night CIDRAP News published a report by Lisa Schnirring on a pair of human antibody studies released yesterday looking at potential treatments for the MERS coronavirus. The studies appear in Science Translational Medicine and PNAS, and Lisa does a terrific job summarizing them.
Two MERS antibody studies may help quest for treatment
Lisa Schnirring | Staff Writer | CIDRAP News
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Apr 28, 2014
Amid a surge of MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus) cases, two research teams today—one based at Harvard University and the other in China—said they have identified antibodies against the novel virus, the first of many steps toward developing a treatment against the disease.
The two teams used different search strategies and identified different types of antibodies, but their target was the same: preventing the spike-shaped protein on the surface of MERS-CoV from binding to receptors on the surface of cells that line human airways.
MERS-CoV causes a respiratory infection that can lead to severe pneumonia and kidney failure. The disease is fatal for more than 40% of patients infected, and so far there is no treatment or vaccine.
Although promising, as Lisa explained, the identification of potentially useful antibodies against the MERS coronavirus is but the first step towards creating a usable therapy. Over the past 5 years we’ve looked at several similar studies, including:
- In 2009 in Research: Monoclonal Antibodies Against Influenza researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (Dana-Farber), Burnham Institute for Medical Research (Burnham) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced the identification of human monoclonal antibodies (mAb) that work against a wide range of influenza viruses, including the H5N1 bird flu virus.
- Similarly, in 2010, in Monoclonal Antibodies Revisited, we looked a Korean company (Celltrion) working on Human Monoclonal Antibodies (moAb) that are designed to work against a wide variety of influenza viruses.
- In 2011, we looked at NIH: Investigating A Potential Treatment For Hendra & Nipah Viruses which looked at using the human monoclonal antibody (hmAb) m102.4 to protect green monkeys against a Hendra Virus challenge. In 2009 research published in PLoS Pathogens illustrated its protective effect against Nipah in ferrets.
These monoclonal antibodies would not work like a vaccine, which confer relatively long-term protection. Rather, a single injection is expected to serve as a treatment, or to work as a temporary (several week) prophylaxis.
While a hugely promising field of research, the above examples show that isolating a candidate antibody is a long way from having a tested and approved therapy.
We’ve seen a great deal of optimism expressed by the Saudi government about rapidly developing a vaccine for the MERS coronavirus. While no doubt reassuring to the public, a vaccine is something that most scientist believe will take several years to develop (see Obstacles To A MERS Vaccine).
Although a human antibody therapy might be brought to market sooner, no one should expect they will provide a near-term solution to the MERS problem either.
