Slashdot Mirror
How Llamas Could Help Us Fight the Flu (pbs.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from PBS: Researchers now think they're on the path to a new kind of flu protection -- one that might last longer and work against all types of influenza viruses. The source of their new defense: llamas. These furry South American mammals produce special antibodies -- molecules that mark foreign invaders in our bodies for destruction -- that can identify a huge range of elusive influenza viruses. A new study used these antibodies to target multiple strains of influenza at once, a technique that could lead to more effective flu prevention. These antibodies can survive without refrigeration for longer, which could reduce the cost and complexity of flu treatment.
The researchers behind Thursday's study fused four different single-domain antibodies into one larger molecule, held together with a human protein as a scaffold. When they injected this hybrid into mice, the antibodies kept the animals safe from a wide variety of influenza type A and type B viruses -- the two most common assailants in America's annual flu epidemic. This hybrid seemed to successfully target each of the five flu strains they tested. When the researchers injected mice with their hybrid antibody, it protected the mice from lethal doses of the flu. But the paper also explored another route of delivery: gene therapy. The researchers used a benign virus -- dubbed AAV -- to embed the genetic blueprint of the llama antibodies directly into mouse cells. This procedure allowed the mice to produce the antibodies on their own.
The researchers behind Thursday's study fused four different single-domain antibodies into one larger molecule, held together with a human protein as a scaffold. When they injected this hybrid into mice, the antibodies kept the animals safe from a wide variety of influenza type A and type B viruses -- the two most common assailants in America's annual flu epidemic. This hybrid seemed to successfully target each of the five flu strains they tested. When the researchers injected mice with their hybrid antibody, it protected the mice from lethal doses of the flu. But the paper also explored another route of delivery: gene therapy. The researchers used a benign virus -- dubbed AAV -- to embed the genetic blueprint of the llama antibodies directly into mouse cells. This procedure allowed the mice to produce the antibodies on their own.
I know this sounds exotic and exciting, but the llama angle on this story is basic biotechnology. Llamas (and several other species) make simpler and smaller antibodies than typical mammals. This makes them much easier to work with, sequence, etc. When making a custom antibody, it's not unusual to choose a llama as your "antibody development tool."
There are llama farms near biotech hubs that do nothing but repeatedly inject llamas with small doses of some protein or molecule and sell the blood (packed with antibodies) back to the pharma and biotech companies.
The actual neat part of this story is the (slow, but steady) development of a universal influenza vaccine.