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Of the nine treatments and preventives for COVID-19 authorized for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration, three are drugs made from so-called monoclonal antibodies. Such drugs provide patients with ready-made antibodies that neutralize the virus, bypassing the body s slower and sometimes less effective process of making its own antibodies.
But such therapies were developed without detailed information about how antibodies interact with the rest of the immune system during COVID-19. Faced with a new, deadly and fast-spreading disease, drug designers started work without knowing whether antibodies ability to activate a variety of immune cells would aid or hinder efforts to control the disease. Such abilities are collectively known as antibody effector functions.