Coronavirus: how llama blood could save seriously ill Covid patients

Antibodies taken from the blood of llamas can be engineered to target the Covid-19 coronavirus to create a treatment that could save countless lives, new research suggests.

Scientists led by a team from Oxford University have tested the virus-fighting potential of antibodies from Fifi, a llama living in Reading, in laboratory trials.

Transfusions of antibody-rich blood plasma from recovered Covid-19 patients are already being trialled in hospitals across the UK, “but the new findings herald the prospect of a more potent and easily available treatment”, The Telegraph reports.

Llamas, camels and alpacas “naturally produce quantities of small antibodies with a simple structure, meaning they can be turned into nanobodies”, the newspaper explains. The researchers found that these nanobodies bind tightly to the spike protein of Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, which blocks and prevents the viral invader from entering human cells.

The team behind the study - outlined in a newly published paper in the journal Nature - hope that “llama-derived nanobodies could eventually be developed as a treatment for humans struck down with a severe case of Covid-19”, says the Daily Mail. 

However, the research is still in a very early stage, with “academics at the Rosalind Franklin Institute at Oxford University condensing a process which would normally take almost a year into just 12 weeks”, the newspaper adds.

Study leader James Naismith, a professor of structural biology and director of the institute, said that the “nanobodies have the potential to be used in a similar way to convalescent serum, effectively stopping progression of the virus in patients who are ill”.