Spurred by the health emergency posed by COVID-19, they streamlined their technique further, until it took them just 35 days to isolate 70 monoclonal antibodies that neutralize SARS-CoV-2 from the couple’s blood samples.Each monoclonal antibody is produced by a different line of memory B cells — a type of immune cell that “remembers” a particular protein sequence of the virus.
The researchers reported their work earlier this month in the journal Nature Medicine.After working with 40 of the most effective antibodies, the researchers conducted a second set of studies, described in a paper now accepted for publication in Nature.