Most antibody treatments and vaccines targeting the coronavirus focus on stimulating an immune response against the spike protein, but targeting other sites on the virus as well may be a better approach, researchers say. Their study of COVID-19 "super-responders" — survivors whose immune systems had generated strong responses to the virus — showed that more than half of those antibodies targeted components of the virus other than the spike protein. Nucleocapsid proteins and the open reading frame-encoded proteins, ORF8 and ORF10, represent the most prevalent non-Spike targets, the researchers found. This suggests that non-spike related antibodies may play a significant role in clearing the virus, the research team said in a paper posted on Thursday on bioRxiv ahead of peer review In terms of natural immunity, it also suggests that when faced with new spike protein variants, the immune system will have other sites on the virus that it can still remember and attack. A spokesperson for the researchers said their company, Immunome Inc, is developing a cocktail of antibodies that target multiple sites on the virus. —Reuters Staff Source
