monoclonal antibodies

Enterovirus D68 has caused an increasing number of infections during the past decade and is associated with acute flaccid myelitis, a polio-like condition that mostly affects children and causes sudden weakness and paralysis.

The antibodies may have clinical benefit as antiviral drugs to treat potentially life-threatening infections in elderly and immunosuppressed patients.

The findings reported in the journal Immunity support the development of a monoclonal antibody for prevention and treatment of influenza B — and will help guide efforts to develop a universal influenza vaccine.

The approach, which combines high-performance computing, simulation, machine learning and experimental validation, will help keep antibody drugs up to date in the future against highly variable viruses.

Vanderbilt's Scott Smith, MD, PhD, has been awarded a five-year, $3.5 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, to study the human immune response to tick bites and its role in preventing tick-borne illnesses.

Using a technique developed at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, researchers identified antibodies that are excellent leads as potential therapies for human parainfluenza virus 3, a leading cause of acute and potentially fatal respiratory illness.

Reporting Nov. 6 in Cell Reports Medicine, Ivelin Georgiev, PhD, and colleagues demonstrated that antibodies isolated from children’s blood samples displayed high levels of neutralization and potency against variants of the COVID-19 virus, SARS-CoV-2, even when the children had not previously been exposed to or vaccinated against those variants.