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Nanoantibodies come from the blood of the camel family. Thanks to their small size and strong binding ability, they are a precision weapon in the fight against infectious and autoimmune diseases, in cancer therapy and in the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. The University of Zurich also produces them.
Her discovery was a coincidence. At the end of the 1980s, there was great fear of HIV and hepatitis. The students at the Free University of Brussels therefore refused to use their own or their colleagues’ blood to identify and isolate antibodies for an internship.
Luckily there was still some dromedary blood in the freezer.
The experiment revealed something surprising: In addition to the conventional antibodies, the students discovered another, previously unknown antibody. This had never been seen before – not in humans, rabbits or mice.
Its special feature: a much lower molecular weight. The mass of the antibody is lower because it only has two chains of amino acids, instead of four chains like a traditional antibody.
Accidental discovery confirmed
To be sure, the experiment was repeated using blood from camels, llamas and alpacas from the Brussels Zoo. And in fact, all animals in the camel family had these strange mini-antibodies.
But are the newly discovered antibodies just remnants of a primitive immune system or actually functioning antibodies?
To find out, the researchers needed a live animal. Would his immune system react if he were injected with a virus, for example? The animal actually reacted by producing the strange little antibodies.
Shortly afterwards, the scientists made the discovery that would later revolutionize medicine by discovering that the tip of the antibody could be separated without the fragment losing its robustness and ability to bind to foreign bodies: the nanoantibody was born.
Hope for medicine
Its small size and enormous binding ability make the nanoantibody versatile.
- A first breakthrough occurred in 2014 in connection with the treatment of a disease that is still potentially fatal today: anthrax, also known as anthrax. A nanoantibody is able to penetrate into the protective shell of the bacterium Bacillus anthracis to invade and destroy it.
- A drug to treat a rare blood clotting disorder will follow in 2019. The nanoantibody caplacizumab can dissolve blood clots in the microcirculation of organs and tissues. The mortality from the disease is reduced again.
Scientists around the world are conducting research with nanoantibodies to find more precise treatments for cancer and better diagnostic methods for Alzheimer’s. Thanks to their good binding ability, the nanoantibodies can also be used as markers – to distinguish diseased tissue from healthy tissue or to detect protein deposits in the brain.
30 years after the discovery, the loss of patent protection for commercial use in the early 1990s, a lot of basic research and the average 15-year development phase of a new drug, many new possible applications are on the verge of possible clinical approval.
The potential is so great that many research centers now have their own llama or alpaca herds.