Chinese scientists design cocktail antibody to treat, prevent COVID-19

BEIJING, March 2 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists designed a cocktail antibody that can deliver a one-two punch to the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

The researchers from Capital Medical University and Chinese Academy of Sciences developed the bispecific human monoclonal antibody against SARS-CoV-2, combining a noncompeting pair of human neutralizing antibodies, namely B38 and H4, to target two antigens, thus blocking the virus from binding to its receptor.

The double-kill antibody or bsAb15 has shown greater neutralizing efficiency than its parental ones, and more potent neutralizing activity against the Delta variant, according to the study published on Nature Immunology this week.

They selected escape mutants of the two parental antibodies and demonstrated that bsAb15 can efficiently neutralize all escape mutants of single antibodies.

Also, the new antibody was shown to reduce the viral titer in infected nonhuman primates and human ACE2 transgenic mice, making it a feasible and effective potential strategy to treat and prevent severe COVID-19, according to the study.