Newly Discovered Antibody Protects Against All Covid-19 Variants | Hacker News Reader

Newly Discovered Antibody Protects Against All Covid-19 Variants

news.utexas.edu

49 pointsivewonyoung17 comments

> The University of Texas at Austin discovered and isolated a broadly neutralizing plasma antibody, called SC27, from a single patient.

> The researchers have filed a patent application for SC27.

The antibody itself is patentable? What about the patient whose body created the antibody? Does this patient have any rights to it?

There's something about this that I don't like. Sure, if the antibody was engineered by the researchers, I could see it being patented. But discovered and taken as-is from another patient and then patented seems like a gray area to me.

Naïvely, I'm hoping they're only patenting this so no one less savory can and will charge nothing to license it. I'm hoping.

I’d imagine the process of synthesizing the gene or proteins or similar is what’s patented, not the genetic material itself.

You can also patent the practice of using that antibody to prevent/cure a certain disease, similar to how there's a patent for "Methods of inducing sleep using melatonin" https://patents.google.com/patent/US5449683A/en

Why would that be a gray area? It’s a discovery, it’s a specific antibody. What’s the difference if it was discovered in a human, an animal model or in a screening of randomly generated sequences?

because a human made it. If it happened outside of their body, like that human being painted a picture, someone else coming along and taking it would be theft in some dimension, so why is taking something from inside their body any different?

Just because we have more science these days doesn't change the fact that it came from a person. If we didn't understand the science but that blood from this person cured the disease we'd be paying this person for every pint of blood they produced.

They didn’t “take something from inside their body” the patient consented to be included in a study.

These things are not done without informed consent, let alone against the patients will.

Provenance and attribution are concepts. How novel something can be presented is kind of the whole idea

Behold, my newest discovery: lumpy milk. How was it made? Time, my patent, and the plainant will tell

"Mere discovery" in general is a gray area, which many jurisdictions do not recognize as eligible for patent. Patents are supposed to incentivize creation. It's much less helpful to society to grant a monopoly on a naturally occurring thing, that already exists, to the first person to happen to stumble across it. Supposing it wasn't a protein from a single human, but a protein contained in all blueberries. Blueberries are now known to be a cure for Covid-19 if you eat tons of them. Should the discoverer of this world-changing fact be suddenly granted a monopoly on blueberries?

I would hope the individual that produced the antibody is well rewarded for what their body did.

Unless this antibody is somehow similar across all antibodies created as a reaction to an infection - that single patient should get a part of the profits from all vaccines/treatments derived from the antibody made in their body - it's only fair if their "work" is part of making vaccines that are then sold to others globally on a wide scale.

Then again, this is the medical industrial complex, so I'm sure they'll find a way to justify not reimbursing the patient. Unless I'm mistaken?

A lot of juniors I talk to say they are just here for the money. I doubt it is different for doctors. Sad existence

HeLa eventually earned a settlement

I would hope the individual that produced the antibody is well rewarded for what their body did.

The press release cites that they discovered it in one person, but it also doesn't say:

* how many people they were studying

* how they discovered this antibody

* after finding it, if they looked at others for it

It could be that literally 80% of the population has this antibody.

While the attempts to lockdown in various countries were a noble effort, my calculations indicate that basically everyone had been exposed to COVID prior to any vaccines being released. It just spread too fast regardless of efforts.

Various serological tests at the time showed high numbers of people with antibodies. This can be doubly highlighted by the fact that the vaccines had very low impact against strains they were not designed for, and COVID just mutates super fast.

(Had COVID vaccines been effective against strains they were not designed for, covid would have simply died out by now.)

I suspect almost everyone has been infected with dozens of COVID strains at this point. And that antibody optimization is a standard immune system defense.

Well, we'll see over the next few months re: this specific antibody.

> The technology used to isolate the antibody, termed Ig-Seq, gives researchers a closer look at the antibody response to infection and vaccination using a combination of single-cell DNA sequencing and proteomics.

/? ig-seq [ site:github.com ] : https://www.google.com/search?q=ig-seq+site%3Agithub.com

https://www.illumina.com/science/sequencing-method-explorer/... :

> Rep-Seq is a collective term for repertoire sequencing technologies. DNA sequencing of immunoglobulin genes (Ig-seq) and molecular amplification fingerprinting

> [ Ig-seq] is a targeted gDNA amplification method performed with primers complementary to the rearranged V-region gene (VDJ recombinant). Amplification of cDNA is then performed with the appropriate 5’ primers.

What's the path for taking this discovery into a vaccine?

I think this would make for an effective treatment via monoclonal antibodies wouldn't it? i.e. have a bioreactor manufacture the antibodies and administer them to people who contract the disease.

This is super exciting!

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