Chimeric camel/human heavy-chain antibodies protect against MERS-CoV infection.

ABSTRACT: Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) continues to cause outbreaks in humans as a result of spillover events from dromedaries. In contrast to humans, MERS-CoV-exposed dromedaries develop only very mild infections and exceptionally potent virus-neutralizing antibody responses. These strong antibody responses may be caused by affinity maturation as a result of repeated exposure to the virus or by the fact that dromedaries-apart from conventional antibodies-have relatively unique, heavy chain-only antibodies (HCAbs). These HCAbs are devoid of light chains and have long complementarity-determining regions with unique epitope binding properties, allowing them to recognize and bind with high affinity to epitopes not recognized by conventional antibodies. Through direct cloning

SUBMITTER: Stalin Raj V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6082650 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature