Discoveries
Human antibody found to thwart SARS virus
By plucking an antibody from a collection of 27 billion at Dana-Farber, Institute investigators led by Wayne Marasco, MD, PhD, have succeeded in blocking the SARS virus from infecting human cells in the laboratory.
Jianhua Sui, PhD, (left) and Wayne Marasco, MD, PhD, hope the new SARS antibody will be tested worldwide.
The team believes this is a promising step toward preventive or therapeutic drugs for SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), a highly contagious illness that often progresses to pneumonia and is sometimes fatal. The new antibody looks encouraging in animal tests and could be commercially developed for use in clinical trials.
"It would be very satisfying to help people avoid this terrible illness," says Marasco, who has created one of the world's largest collections of human monoclonal antibodies — proteins produced by immune blood cells that recognize specific foreign cells and substances and mark them for attack by the body's defenses. Using this library, research fellow Jianhua Sui, PhD, and other Marasco team members including Akikazu Murakami, Leslie Matthews, Mobolaji Olurinde, and Aimee St. Clair Tallarico isolated the monoclonal antibody and demonstrated its effectiveness within six months after the SARS virus was discovered in Asia in early 2003.
Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital, Children's Hospital Boston, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also took part.
