Vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus have been made possible by an unprecedented worldwide collaboration. But medications against COVID-19 have as yet seen only partial success. With the support of the Bavarian Research Foundation, a Munich research team has developed a protein which has reliably prevented infection by the virus and its variants in cell culture tests.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus uses a protein called Angiotensin Converting Enzyme 2 (ACE2) on the surface of human cells as an entry gate. This is where the spike protein of the virus finds a hold in order to ultimately infect the cell.
Recombinant antibodies are already being used in therapy for COVID-19 illnesses, including at the TUM University Hospital rechts der Isar; nevertheless the virus has used mutation to evade attacks by therapeutic antibodies and in part also the natural antibodies formed after vaccination.
Endogenous proteins turned against the virus
A team of scientists from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), the Ludwig Maximilians-University of Munich, Helmholtz Munich, and Munich-based Formycon AG are pursuing a different strategy: They have combined the ACE2 protein with part of a human antibody protein and have thus created an active ingredient which blocks the spike protein of the virus. In cell culture tests they were able to completely neutralize the virus and prevent infection.
"Both vaccines and antibody medications have the same problem, that the virus manages to evade them by just a little bit more with each successful mutation," says Ulrike Protzer, head of the Institute of Virology at the Technical University of Munich and at Helmholtz Munich. "This results in what are called immune escape variants."
The team led by Prof. Protzer and Johannes Buchner, Professor of Biotechnology at the Department of Chemistry of the Technical University of Munich in Garching, is thus focusing on the most important target of the virus, the ACE2 protein.
