Theme 2 - the role of antibodies in Covid infection

In their study, published in eLife (29 July), the scientists analysed blood samples collected from patients who had previously been infected with COVID-19 and who were admitted to UCLH for other reasons, samples from health care workers as well as samples collected from patients at different points earlier in the pandemic. They identified COVID-19 antibodies in the blood, and in the lab ran tests to see if antibodies produced after infection with one variant were able to bind to and neutralise other variants. ... "As the antibodies were able to bind to other variants at a similar level, but had differing ability to neutralise other strains, this suggests that there are only a few regions on the spike of the virus which are important to this neutralisation process. It is the mutations within these key sites which impact the ability of antibodies produced by one variant to neutralise another." - from Crick news article August 2021.