A team of researchers from Tel Aviv University has demonstrated that antibodies isolated from the immune system of recovered COVID-19 patients are effective in neutralizing all known strains of the virus, including the delta and the omicron variants. According to the researchers, this discovery may eliminate the need for repeated booster vaccinations and strengthen the immune system of populations at risk.

The research was led by Dr. Natalia Freund and doctoral students Michael Mor and Ruofan Lee of the Departmentof Clinical Microbiology and Immunology at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine. The study was conducted in collaboration with Dr. Ben Croker of the University of California San Diego. Prof. Ye Xiang of Tsinghua University in Beijing. Prof. Meital Gal-Tanamy and Dr. Moshe Dessau of Bar-Ilan University also took part in the study. The study was published in Communications Biology.

The present study is a continuation of a preliminary study conducted in October 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 crisis. At that time, Dr. Freund and her colleagues sequenced all the B immune system cells from the blood of people who had recovered from the original COVID strain in Israel, and isolated nine antibodies that the patients produced. The researchers now found that some of these antibodies are very effective in neutralizing the new coronavirus variants, delta and omicron.

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