Since the outbreak of the new coronavirus pneumonia at the end of 2019, the research team of Professor Zhang Linqi of Tsinghua University School of Medicine and the research team of Professor Zhang Zheng of Shenzhen Third People's Hospital have worked together to carry out protective antibody responses to new coronavirus infection and recovery patients A systematic and comprehensive analysis.
The Chinese research team has successfully isolated more than 200 monoclonal antibodies against the novel coronavirus and its coding genes from the blood B lymphocytes of patients with the new coronavirus pneumonia.
These antibodies are natural weapons produced by recoverers during the viral infection process and specifically recognize key targets of viral surface proteins to prevent the virus from effectively entering human cells.
This result was jointly achieved by the research team of Professor Zhang Linqi of Tsinghua University School of Medicine and the research team of Professor Zhang Zheng of Shenzhen Third People's Hospital.
Some of these antibodies have demonstrated highly effective neutralizing capabilities, which have significantly reduced or lost the infectivity of the new coronavirus.
The team is working with Professor Wang Xinquan of the School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University to conduct systematic structural and functional research on these antibodies, and select the best antibodies.
They are working hard to promote large-scale production, preclinical animal research and subsequent clinical application development, and provide a powerful medical intervention for the treatment and prevention of new coronavirus pneumonia.
B lymphocytes are full-time cells that produce and secrete antibodies in the body and play a key role in fighting infections, tumors and autoimmune diseases.
In terms of quantity, antibodies can constitute about 20% of the total protein in the plasma, and continuously patrol foreign invading viruses throughout the body with the flow of blood, and exert a powerful inhibitory and clearing effect on them.
The protective immune response induced by humans after vaccination is mostly due to antibodies against pathogens secreted by B cells, especially antibodies with neutralizing ability.
In the body, the formation of these highly efficient B lymphocytes requires a complex process of occurrence, development, maturation, and memory formation. How to understand and use this process to maximize the human immune function is the focus and difficulty of infection and immunology. .
In the past few years, Zhang Linqi's team and Zhang Zheng's team have carried out systematic and in-depth research on a number of viral diseases that plague people's health.
It is found that the coordination between B lymphocytes and T lymphocytes plays an important role in protecting the body.
Especially in the research of B lymphocytes, the most advanced concepts and knowledge in the field are used to develop and optimize multiple antibody research platform technologies.
In a short period of time, a large amount of high-efficiency antiviral antibodies and coding genes were screened, isolated, and obtained from trace amounts of blood, which laid a solid foundation for the study of new anti-coronavirus antibodies.
Here is the research result:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.21.990770v2
Special Report: Fighting The New Coronavirus
