Getting sick with a common cold doesn't make you immune to COVID-19, but a COVID-19 infection might, at least temporarily, boost the number of antibodies you have against common cold-causing coronaviruses and the SARS-CoV-1 and MERS-CoV viruses, all of which are closely related. Scientists at Scripps Research have now characterized coronavirus antibodies isolated from 11 people to reveal how COVID-19 impacts the immune system's ability to recognize other coronaviruses

"Getting a better understanding of how immunity against this broad family of coronaviruses changes with COVID-19 infection is an important step toward developing better coronavirus vaccines, both for COVID-19 and for future, related pathogens," says Andrew Ward, Ph.D., professor of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology at Scripps Research and senior author of the new paper, published online this week in Science Advances.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 is just one in a large and diverse family of coronaviruses. A few of its relatives are equally contagious and virulent—causing Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and the 2002-2004 SARS outbreak—while others, considered common cold viruses, cause much milder symptoms. Overall, many of these coronaviruses have only one quarter to one half of their genetic material in common with SARS-CoV-2, but individual sections of the viruses' structures—most notably the spike protein that juts out of each coronavirus—are considered relatively similar between family members.

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