What? Can infection with the new coronavirus produce antibodies that enhance the virus's ability to infect?

The internet has been very lively recently. Not only the elephants from Yunnan heading north have attracted attention, but also an article published online by Cell on May 24, 2021, about the production of antibodies after infection with the new coronavirus. The article showed that infection with the new coronavirus can produce some antibodies that enhance the ability of the virus to infect. As a result, this article once became the focus of people's discussion!

As a responsible citizen, we should not create or spread rumors, and most importantly, we should not create panic. Today, I will introduce this paper to you from an objective perspective.

First of all, this article is slightly different from the "real ADE". As for what the "real ADE" is, we still have to wait for the "real big guys" to interpret it. I won’t explain it here.

The article title is:

An infectivity-enhancing site on the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein targeted by antibodies

This means that a type of antibody against the new coronavirus S protein can enhance the infection ability of the new coronavirus.

It's a bit confusing, but to put it simply, there is experimental evidence that if there is a certain type of COVID-19 antibody, it will lead to an enhanced COVID-19 infection.

A picture is worth a thousand words, you can see it for yourself. In fact, I guess I just translated it and you didn’t read it~

First of all, the reason why the new coronavirus infects cells is mainly through the binding of the S protein of the new coronavirus to ACE2 on human cells, as shown on the left side of the picture above.

Therefore, this position is crucial.

The S protein has two subunits, S1 and S2, of which S1 contains two important domains, NTD and RBD (translate the specific meaning yourself).

By recognizing the NTD and RBD, it is possible to achieve an immune response.

Secondly, what did the author do?

1. They isolated antibodies from recovered COVID-19 patients

As we all know, if people can survive after being infected with the new coronavirus, it means that the immunity in their bodies has defeated the new coronavirus, and this immunity is mainly antibodies. Therefore, compared with any animal experiments, the antibodies truly isolated from the human body represent what happens in reality.

As a result, a total of 74 monoclonal antibodies (which can be understood as relatively single components) were isolated. After studying these antibodies, it was found that 33 of them recognized NTD and 16 recognized RBD, that is, 49 recognized S1. The remaining 25 were not S2.

2. But then, it gets interesting. Because some of these antibodies can actually enhance the binding between the S protein and ACE2.

This doesn't make sense. Logically, you went there to fight the virus and stop the two from getting together, but instead you went there to act as a matchmaker.

Tell me, is this what a human being does?

Look at these symptoms, 4A2 is normal.

Moreover, there is more than one such antibody.

Look at this reaction in the cell

It would be fine if antibodies were not added, but after adding antibodies, the infection was directly enhanced.

Pretty weird, isn't it?

3. At this time, the author also thought that rowing was possible, so he used his brain to analyze why this situation occurred.

What the author thought of was structure. After all, genes determine structure, and structure affects results.

These antibodies have slightly different structures.

As you can see in the figure above, the effects of mutations are quite different.

Can't see clearly? Let me zoom in for you

Is it much clearer now? (I guess you still don’t understand. There is no way. Only professionals can understand this. For example, I don’t understand it either.)

But let’s just look at the pictures.

Do you understand this time?

That thing on the right, a combination of pink and blue, has a different posture, right?

Yes, this is what led to the above result.

Continue looking

Well, actually the above is a diagram of protein structure, which may be difficult for many people to understand.

So let's take a simpler model diagram

Probably, these strange antibodies, after binding to the S protein, will cause the RBD conformation to change, causing their posture to change, making it easier to bind to ACE2.

Okay, that’s almost it.

Does this thing look like ADE? Very much so. But there will definitely be people who say that this is not the real ADE.

So, I won’t make any conclusions here.

Finally, give some reasons:

1. This is different from what everyone thought of the ADE mechanism in the past. However, whether ADE is the gold standard definition depends on the individual.

2. This is the result of a cell experiment and does not represent an individual conclusion.

3. The possibility of other forms of antibody influence cannot be ruled out.