A team of researchers across Canada, including collaborators from Schulich Medicine & Dentistry, is helping to shed light on how our bodies develop immunity to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Their research highlights the importance of specific antibodies made early on in infection, and may help to assess how effectively current vaccines are at conferring long-term immunity.
One of the ways that antibodies contribute to immunity is through their neutralizing capability, which is the ability to bind to the virus and block its entry into the cell, making it unable to infect and cause severe infection. A new study, published this month in Cell Reports, demonstrated that a class of antibody, called IgM, is critical in neutralizing SARS-CoV-2. The researchers identified that IgM was present in the blood of patients previously infected with the virus that causes COVID-19….