Dutch antibody internationally recognized: ‘Super, but goal continues to help people’

The world has been in the grip of Covid-19 for a while now, how is that for you as researchers?

Spicy. We are conducting 24/7 research into the fight against the coronavirus. At first we thought it was a sprint, but eventually I realize we are running a marathon at sprint speed. It is quite exhausting, but that is minor distress. It is especially satisfying to research a virus that is ravaging the world.

“Coronavirologists like us are particularly called upon because very few virologists have devoted themselves to this. Coronaviruses have never been a major medical problem in the past. Now that it is, I receive thousands of emails from all over the world. Scientists, research institutions, companies, they all want to collect knowledge from us, because we have been researching the various corona viruses for years. ”

Is the current publication in Nature Communications a new milestone?

“Now that it has been found good enough by the professional brothers for publication – and there are high requirements for this – the research is gaining extra value. That had some feet in the ground, but eventually succeeded. And that is great, we are very happy with it. But the ultimate goal is to help people, then you really create value. ”

Our scoop on your research has hopefully not broken things?

“It surprised me. On Saturday morning I woke up and suddenly saw our own research on all kinds of news sites. That started quite a storm of phone calls and emails that I wasn’t prepared for, but in the end it brought a lot of good. You rarely get that much attention. Partly because you also publish in English, the knowledge is widely spread; the summary of the pre-publication of our article has been read about 300,000 times, which is unprecedented. ”

What is the state of affairs regarding a medicine or test?

“The publication is a first encouraging step towards possible therapy. The antibody can help fight the virus because the right antibody stops an infection. But for that, we must first get a pharmaceutical on board to demonstrate safety and effectiveness in humans, and to scale up the production of the antibody. Discussions are ongoing, but before it is all finished and on the market, we will be at least a few months and possibly a year further. ”

“The great thing about the discovery is that the antibody can work preventively. The administration of the antibody prevents disease in such a case. On the other hand, it can work as a medicine if someone has been diagnosed with the virus and is useful for a home diagnostic test (similar in convenience to a pregnancy test, ed.). But that also takes time to find out. For example, such a home test must be very reliable. You don’t want people to get false negative results and take to the streets with the virus. ”

Is this the first active antibody?

“Yes. That’s because, as Grosveld said, we already had it in the freezer because of research on previous coronaviruses. There are also pre-publications from others about antibodies that prevent the infection of this coronavirus, but we had the first pre-publication and are now the first to have such an antibody officially published. The special thing about this antibody is that it responds to a part of the virus that does not mutate quickly; it applies to the earlier SARS coronavirus and the current one. That increases the chances that it can also work against any future related coronaviruses that are already roaming around in animals. ”