Natalia Freund's paper in PLOS Pathogens
Oren Kobiler co-author
This study is a collaboration between our Faculty, Ichilov and Kaplan hospitals, UC San Diego, Bar Ilan University and ImmunAi startup company. In this study we isolated six anti-SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies that were shown to inhibit the authentic SARS-CoV-2 in culture. The six neutralizing antibodies belong to three different families targeting three different sites on the virus and when used as a cocktail could inhibit completely the live virus in culture.
Moreover, we show that severe cases of COVID-19 correlate with higher antibody responses, and that some donors who have had mild/asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection have very low titers of anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies . Also, we show that neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 come from frequent genetic precursors that and therefore these antibodies can be easily produced upon infection or vaccination.