A scientific breakthrough against COVID-19 has been realized by Tel Aviv University. A team of scientists from the university has demonstrated that antibodies isolated from the immune system of recovered COVID-19 patients are effective in neutralizing all known strains of the virus. This includes the Delta and the Omicron variants. This discovery may eliminate the need for repeated booster vaccinations and strengthen the immune system of populations at risk, according to the researchers.
Dr. Natalia Freund and doctoral students Michael Mor and Ruofan Lee of the Department of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine led the research. The study was conducted in collaboration with Dr. Ben Croker of the University of California San Diego (UCSD). Prof. Ye Xiang of Tsinghua University in Beijing as well as Prof. Meital Gal-Tanamy and Dr. Moshe Dessau of Bar-Ilan University also took part in the study. The study was published on August 5 in the Nature journal Communications Biology.
The current study is a continuation of a preliminary study that was conducted in October 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 crisis. At that time, Dr. Freund and her colleagues sequenced all the B immune system cells from the blood of people in Israel who had recovered from the original COVID strain. They isolated nine antibodies that the patients produced. The scientists have now found that some of these antibodies are exceptionally effective in neutralizing the new coronavirus variants, Delta and Omicron.