With help from computer algorithms, researchers designed proteins from scratch that can trounce the coronavirus in lab animals. Models of proteins sit on a shelf at the Institute of Protein Design at the University of Washington in Seattle, where scientists are designing ways to disrupt the coronavirus’s ability to invade the body’s cells. Credit… Jovelle Tamayo for The New York TimesThe coronavirus might be new, but nature long ago gave humans the tools to recognize it, at least on a microscopic scale: antibodies, Y-shaped immune proteins that can latch onto pathogens and block them from infiltrating cells. Millions of years of evolution have honed these proteins into the disease-fighting weapons they are today. But in a span of just months, a combination of human and machine intelligence may have beaten Mother Nature at her own game. Using computational tools, a team of researchers at the University of Washington designed and built from scratch a molecule that, when pitted against the coronavirus in the lab, can attack and sequester it at least as well as an antibody does. When spritzed up the noses of mice and hamsters, it also appears to protect animals from becoming seriously sick. This molecule, called a mini-binder for its ability to glom onto the coronavirus, is petite and stable enough to be shipped en masse in a freeze-dried state. Bacteria can also be engineered to churn out these mini-binders, potentially making them not only effective but also cheap and convenient. The team’s product is still in the very early stages of development, and will not be on the market any time soon. But so far “it’s looking very promising,” said Lauren Carter, one of the researchers behind the project, which is led by the biochemist David Baker. Eventually, healthy people might be able to self-administer the mini-binders as a nasal spray, and potentially keep any inbound coronavirus particles at bay.“The most elegant application could be something you keep on your bedside table,” Dr. Carter said. “That’s kind of the dream.”Mini-binders are not antibodies, but they thwart the virus in broadly similar ways. The coronavirus enters a cell using a kind of lock-and-key interaction, fitting a protein called a spike — the key — into a molecular lock called ACE-2, which adorns the outsides of certain human cells. Antibodies made by the human immune system can interfere with this process . Many scientists hope that mass-produced mimics of these antibodies might help treat people with Covid-19 or prevent them from falling ill after becoming infected. But a lot of antibodies are needed to rein in the coronavirus, especially if an infection is underway. Antibodies are also onerous to produce and deliver to people. To develop a less finicky alternative, members of the Baker lab, led by the biochemist Longxing Cao, took a computational approach. The researchers modeled how millions of hypothetical, lab-designed proteins would interact with the spike.
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