COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.The human immune system makes many antibodies in response to COVID-19 infection or vaccination, and no single variant of the new coronavirus can yet escape all of them, according to a study posted on Thursday on bioRxiv ahead of peer review.Researchers looked at how mutations in coronavirus variants affect antibodies’ ability to target a key region on the virus spike called the receptor binding domain (RBD), which has been mutating rapidly.
In particular, the researchers studied three sets of antibodies that were classified by the structural features that affect their binding to the virus.