Elite antibodies
A breakthrough has been made in the development of a vaccine against hepatitis C
Svetlana Maslova, Hi-tech+
Despite the improved methods of treatment, hepatitis C annually takes the lives of about 400 thousand people. Scientists managed to identify a group of broadly neutralizing virus antibodies and "pack" them into a single product — a synthetic antibody that will form the basis of the vaccine. The complexity of the hepatitis C virus lies in its significant genetic diversity and mutation rate, but the new approach solves these problems.
In search of an approach to develop an effective vaccine, a group of German researchers turned to patients who had been diagnosed with hepatitis C to identify the so-called "elite neutralizers" and study their spectrum of antibodies against the virus, according to the website of the German Center for Infection Research.
Article by Weber et al. Analysis of antibodies from HCV elite neutralizers identifies genetic determinants of broad neutralization is published in the journal Immunity – VM.
This is due to the fact that an effective vaccine should cause a wide range of neutralizing antibodies to fight various strains of hepatitis C virus. For this reason, scientists began to study the properties of neutralizing antibodies of these rare patients.
Of the sample of 435 people, approximately 5% corresponded to this category and demonstrated exceptional activity in neutralizing the virus. Scientists isolated more than 300 antibodies from them, which were then analyzed with extreme care. As a result, they were able to recognize amino acid sequences that affected the neutralizing ability of antibodies.
Further work using machine learning tools made it possible to combine the findings and create a synthetic antibody with broadly neutralizing properties. It is planned that it will form the basis of a hepatitis C vaccine, which has not been developed so far due to the reasons described above.
Now the team of scientists who created the experimental antibody is preparing to conduct preclinical tests on animal models to confirm the effectiveness of the approach.
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