Researchers in two US laboratories are preparing for the arrival of blood samples from Mexican flu victims to make a serum that might offer some protection.
Researchers in two US laboratories are preparing for the arrival of blood samples from Mexican flu victims to make a serum that might offer some protection from a dangerous new flu virus.
“It’s emergency science,” Patrick Wilson, of the University of Chicago, said. Wilson and colleague Rafi Ahmed, a vaccine expert at Emory University in Atlanta, hope to develop a new way to quickly make targeted, infection-fighting proteins called
monoclonal antibodies.
In a study last year in the journal Nature, Wilson and Ahmed showed that using just a few tablespoons of blood, they could make influenza antibodies in as little as a month.
They speculated these monoclonal antibodies — specially engineered antibodies that attack a specific protein — might prove useful in an influenza pandemic to help protect health workers until a vaccine could be made.
Last Sunday, researchers at the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention — facing an outbreak of a strange new strain of the H1N1 flu virus — asked the researchers to put their new technology to the test.
For the past week, the teams in Chicago and Atlanta have been stocking up on supplies and waiting for the CDC to send them vials of blood from Mexican patients infected with the new strain of the H1N1 virus, widely known as swine flu.
When the blood samples arrive, the teams will isolate a type of immune system cell known as antibody-secreting plasma cells, which produce a surge of antibodies as part of an initial response to infection. Using these, the researchers will go to work making highly targeted antibodies against the new flu strain.
“Within a few weeks from the time we get the blood, we’re likely to have something of value,” said Wilson, adding that the antibodies would be sent to the CDC for tests to see if they block the virus from infecting cells grown in the lab.
Wilson said the CDC first plans to use the antibodies to make rapid diagnostic test kits that quickly identify the new virus without the need for sophisticated lab equipment to match its genetic sequence. Later, they hope to make antibodies that can be injected into people who have been exposed to the virus.
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