Treatment of a COVID-19 patient who had a suppressed immune system with convalescent plasma coincided with the emergence of different variants of the novel coronavirus, says a new case study.
The finding, though far from conclusive, has potential implications for how the pandemic will be brought under control, underscoring the critical role of vaccination.
In January, when the escalation of novel coronavirus infections was still just beginning in China, immunologist Michel Nussenzweig realized that the world was facing an unusual situation and it was time for him to act. “It was clear that this would be a big problem because of the person-to-person transmission and the speed with which it was spreading,” says the researcher, who coordinates the Laboratory of Molecular Immunology at Rockefeller University in New York.
Over the following weeks, Nussenzweig and his team of 50 scientists temporarily put aside the research they had been working on. Instead, they began searching for antibodies (proteins synthesized by the immune system) in the blood of COVID-19 survivors that would be capable of neutralizing the novel coronavirus. To accomplish this, the researchers are counting on small donations of blood from 100 people who had the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus and were cured. As of the end of March, about 30 volunteers had a