On Apr. 2, 2020, a team of scientists at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle began searching for antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in blood samples being donated by recovered patients in Washington state and, in turn, hope to use them to either prevent or treat the disease.

Like certain drugs, these antibodies have the potential to grab and jam those spikes, which are key parts of the mechanism that the virus, SARS-CoV-2, uses to break into and infect human cells.

Their project began back in mid-February, after researchers led by Dr. Barney Graham of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Dr. Jason McLellan of the University of Texas posted a model of the structure of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. Their work was published in the journal Science.

Using the genetic sequence for the viral spike, the Fred Hutch team was able to manufacture millions of them. To these, they attached a protein, derived from luminescent jellyfish, that would glow under fluorescent light.

Next, they poured these glow-tagged spike probes into a pool of B cells harvested from patient samples. B cells are the body’s factories for antibodies. The researchers isolated every B cell in the sample and searched for those that could make antibodies against the spike.

If clinically useful neutralizing antibodies are identified and found to be effective, Stamatatos said they can be easily grown in large amounts in a laboratory, using long-established genetic engineering techniques. Eventually, the antibodies could be infused into patients infected by the virus, and the therapeutic potential of these lab-grown proteins could be assessed — perhaps in a matter of weeks.

Using manufactured antibodies, this approach would be a well-defined industrialized version of convalescent plasma, an emergency therapy being tested in China and the U.S., in which antibody-rich plasma purified from the blood of recovered COVID-19 patients is infused into those fighting it, in hopes of blocking the virus.