Scientists at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, in collaboration with colleagues in the field, have developed an innovative antibody platform aimed at tackling one of the greatest challenges in treating rapidly evolving viruses like SARS-CoV-2: their ability to mutate and evade existing vaccines and therapies. Their findings, including preclinical studies in mice, introduce the Adaptive Multi-Epitope Targeting and Avidity-Enhanced (AMETA) Nanobody Platform, a new antibody approach for addressing how viruses like SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, evolve to evade vaccines and treatments. Details on the results were published October 23 in the journal Cell https://www.
cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)01143-7 [DOI: 10.1016/j.
cell.2024.09.
043]. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, SARS-CoV-2 has quickly mutated, making many vaccines and treatments less effective. To combat this, Yi Shi, PhD, and his team at Icahn Mount Sinai created AMETA, a versatile platform that uses engineered nanobodies to simultaneously target multiple stable regions of the virus that are less likely to mutate.
This multi-targeting strategy, paired with a significant boost in binding strength, provides a more durable and resilient defense against evolving viruses, say the researchers. "Mutational escape in SARS-CoV-2 has been a persistent challenge, with current vaccines and treatments struggling to keep pace with the virus's rapid evolution," says Dr. Shi, lead corresponding author and .
