Our Savior May Have Charm And Grace

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From WaPo:

The global search for a treatment targeting the novel coronavirus has led to an unlikely potential savior: a cocoa-colored llama named Winter, whose blood could hold a weapon to blunt the virus.

She lives at a research farm in Belgium with about 130 other llamas and alpacas. And like all of them, she produces a special class of disease-fighting antibodies — tiny, even by antibody standards — that show early promise in laboratory tests in blocking the novel coronavirus from entering and infecting cells.

In a paper published Tuesday in the journal Cell, an international team of scientists reports that these petite antibodies, harvested from Winter’s blood, were used to engineer a new antibody that binds to the spiky proteins that stud the surface of the novel coronavirus, “neutralizing” its insidious effect. The study, though preliminary, points to a possible treatment for covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, if the results hold up in animal and human studies.

After watching the screaming protesters on TV, there’s something poetic at the thought of Winter, in all her llama-charm, saving us.

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About Hue White

Former BBS operator; software engineer; cat lackey.

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