Israel has isolated a key coronavirus antibody at its primary biological research centre, Defence Minister Naftali Bennett said Monday. He called it a “significant breakthrough” towards a possible treatment for Covid-19.
In an official statement, Bennet claimed that the “monoclonal neutralising antibody” developed by the Israel Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) “attacks the virus and neutralizes it” inside the virus carrier’s body.
Monoclonal antibodies, as the name suggests, are cloned from a single recovered cell. Thus, they are much easier to create and use, as opposed to polyclonal antibodies which will have to be derived from multiple cells.
In typical antibody vaccines, neutralisation occurs when the laboratory-developed antibodies mimic the body’s natural immune response and attack the virus when exposed to it.