COVID-fighting llamas inspire 'nanobody' treatments to tackle emerging variants

The novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 infects healthy cells in the body by binding to a region on the spike protein—but it’s a region that unfortunately can mutate, allowing the virus to escape treatments and vaccines. That’s why many scientists are still looking for weapons that can defeat the virus and any variants of it that might emerge in the future.

Enter llamas, camels and alpacas.

These mammals and other members of the camelid family naturally make tiny antibodies called nanobodies. Several research teams are developing COVID-19 antibody treatments inspired by nanobodies—and, now, one of them has preclinical evidence that the treatments may be able to neutralize emerging variants of the virus.