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[Presenter] When you think about a llama,
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most likely the very first thing that enters your mind
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has absolutely nothing to do with their antibodies.
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Yet, for years, scientists have actually used them
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to carry out research on viruses, ranging from HIV to SARS,
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and now they’re hoping that llama antibodies
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can work as a treatment for COVID-19
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Stroll us through, possibly, the development of your research.
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When did it begin, how has it progressed
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and what have actually been a few of the main findings
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that you’ve come across over the years?
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So the antibodies from llamas have actually been used,
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not only for, to try to beat viruses.
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We have actually worked on those antibodies for, given that 2010 now,
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so practically a years.
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And we’ve initially described
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that you can utilize those antibodies to obstruct
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avian-influenza infections, likewise, we have actually released
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that a human-respiratory syncytial virus
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is prone to antibodies from llamas.
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How did the preliminary discovery of the antibody in the llama
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finally come about?
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So, originally, these antibodies were found
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in the Free University of Brussels,
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it was, in truth, it was Serge Muyldermans and his group,
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it was, I think, in1993
.
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The story goes that it was found
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throughout an useful course with students.
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So it shows that the practical course with trainees
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can be very significant and cause discoveries.
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That was by serendipity,
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due to the fact that the students, biology students,
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they refused to do the practicals.
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We provided them to use blood from a mouse,
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so to eliminate a mouse and to use the blood from the mouse
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to prepare the antibodies,
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and then they were mad about it
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because they thought about
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that it was not done for a foolish practical
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to eliminate a living animal.
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And so we happened to have,
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likewise, camel blood in the laboratory,
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and that was a leftover of a previous experiment,
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nothing to do with immunology,
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and so we gave them the camel blood
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and then they separated the antibodies.
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And after that we observed that those antibodies in the camels,
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although they have the classical antibodies,
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but they also have a particular antibody isotype
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that is much smaller sized.
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Assistants blamed the trainee at first,
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that they might have made a mistake,
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but they duplicated it and the students were,
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they didn’t make a mistake,
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they had an additional, then they made the discovery.
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That’s amazing, great.
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And how do we receive from that to the llama?
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Since camels and llamas, they are from the very same household.
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It’s the camelidae and the camelids household.
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Given that llamas and alpacas
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are much easier to keep in Europe, in Western Europe.
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So that’s why we made the switch
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from the camels to the llamas.
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For one thing, it’s that they are charming animals,
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is one thing, [Stephania chuckles]
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they got immediately the attention from the audience.
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If you’re dealing with a mouse or a rats
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or guinea pigs or something,
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you can not catch the attention,
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but with llamas you’re capturing attention.
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Now with COVID, in the group of Xavier Saelens,
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there they have actually inoculated a llama with MERS and CoV-1.
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And now they recognized that some those nanobodies,
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one in particular, is likewise cross-reactive.
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It’s really flexible and really easy to customize it
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according to your requirements,
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and so that’s the reason why they could progress
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and make development so quick.
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When we specify a vaccine,
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and especially the work we have actually done here
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with the antibodies from a llama, a specific llama,
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against the brand-new SARS coronavirus,
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we consider that antibody as a sort of passive vaccinations.
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If one thinks of the classical vaccine,
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what one would inject parts of the infection to a topic,
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to a specific, what we tried to do,
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is to utilize the antibodies from the llama straight,
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so inject those into a client to neutralize the infection,
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so it’s a passive vaccination.
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And exist any cons to working with these nanobodies,
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or would you say they’re primarily pros?
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They are so little, they can very easily
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diffuse throughout your entire body
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and that suggests that they are not immunogenic,
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so you can inject it into a human
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and the human is not going to
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raise an immune response against your drug.
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Because they are so little, so robust,
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we can likewise utilize them, those nanobodies in a spray,
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so you can inhale them.
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So, for coronavirus, this could be
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an useful, very first healing treatment.
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And what’s the process of checking the antibodies in llamas
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and, even, changing those outcomes
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into a vaccine for coronavirus?
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What it will take, is that the antibody
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must also work in animal designs,
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and so we’ve released 3 reports so far
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that we can block the COVID-19 infection in vitro,
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so in a tissue cell culture,
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with the antibody from the llama.
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We have appealing outcomes,
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so that’s an important step forward.
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Everyone’s yearning to have a vaccine,
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and I wonder, as a researcher,
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what are your interest in
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the prospect of scientists skipping many phases?
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A typical conventional vaccine
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is generally given to people who are healthy,
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so we do not desire those individuals to become ill
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or have side effects from the vaccine.
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The technology has actually proven
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its benefits for other conditions, other infectious diseases.
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The antibody we have from the llama in,
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now in scientific advancement,
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may end up being accessible to individuals
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a bit earlier than the vaccines are.
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There is an immediate need, as you know.
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The problem here, again,
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is this is not FDA-approved,
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in order to be FDA-approved,
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you likewise have to go through all those scientific phases,
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Phase I, Phase II, Phase III,
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that’s going to take a massive quantity of time.
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However, in the end, you will require more than one service
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to fight versus the SARS.
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You can be immunized against the flu,
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however sometimes it’s just one out of 2 that it’s working.
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Often we have the incorrect vaccine,
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the virus is altering.
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Coronavirus, as far as I understand,
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it’s not changing that quickly.
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There are constantly possibilities
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to adjust and to alter, but of course,
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that requires extra investigations
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and takes a while to do.
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And are you positive about the prospect
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of having a vaccine in the coming months?
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So, I think, from Moderna,
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they have actually currently reported on the RNA vaccine.
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What people are anticipating to see,
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or hope to see, in the clients and the volunteers,
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that appears to work.
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However, there is a great deal of uncertainty as well
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due to the fact that we do not know precisely how much antibodies
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and which kind of antibodies it takes
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to control the infection, to avoid illness,
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to prevent shedding, to avoid transmission.
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People say, Do it as good as possible,
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instead of as fast as possible.
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because being too fast, too quickly, is in some cases
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not always the best way forward.
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But I believe we will get there.
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