https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-10- ... -cov-.html
by Marla Paul, Northwestern University
An entirely new approach to monoclonal antibody therapy shows that targeting the more genetically stable internal protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus rather than the surface spike protein can also clear SARS-CoV-2, reports a study from Northwestern Medicine and the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
Some monoclonal antibody treatments have stopped working because the spike viral protein undergoes high rates of mutation, rendering some viral variants resistant to current antibody therapies. The novel approach could provide a new armament in treatments that could preserve effectiveness as the spike protein mutates.
This is the first time that therapeutic monoclonal antibodies have targeted an internal rather than a surface protein.
"These results may also contribute to the development of combined antibody therapies for SARS-CoV-2 as well as other viral diseases such as HIV by targeting unconventional viral proteins that are not typically targeted by monoclonal antibody therapies," said co-corresponding author Pablo Penaloza-MacMaster, Ph.D., assistant professor of Microbiology-Immunology.