Audio Interview

SARS-CoV-2 human monoclonal antibody therapy

Published on May 24, 2020   17 min

Other Talks in the Playlist: Interviews on Covid-19

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Interviewer: Professor Crowe, thank you for taking the time today to discuss the research being done in your lab on SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. To start things off, could you please give an overview on what is happening in this research into antibodies which could be used against SARS-CoV-2 infection? Prof. Crowe: Sure, thanks for having me and I'm happy to tell you about the work our group is doing. Of course it's a large team effort, not only at my laboratory at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, but with many collaborators around the country. Obviously, in January it became evident that this virus was going to cause problems all over the world. The first case in the United States occurred in the third week of January, and we activated our team at about that time to make human monoclonal antibodies that might be used for prevention or therapy, they could also be used for diagnostic tests or even characterizing vaccines. Antibodies are typically pretty important in the overall response to an epidemic, so we launched our research program. We focussed completely on human monoclonal antibodies from survivors of natural infection, so what we did initially was we spent a lot of time identifying the first dozen or so cases in the United States and contacting them and offering enrolment in our studies. A number of the very first cases did participate in our studies and we were able to isolate thousands of monoclonal antibodies from blood samples from these individuals, we're pretty much finished with that discovery phase and now we've moved on to characterizing the antibodies.
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SARS-CoV-2 human monoclonal antibody therapy

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