Researchers discover ‘master key’ to combat all Covid-19 variants

New Delhi: More than two-and-a-half years into the coronavirus pandemic, researchers have achieved a breakthrough in their fight against a virus that keeps mutating and evading the immunity response humans develop from available vaccines.

Covid variants such as Delta and Omicron and their sub-variants continue to cause alarming new cases of the disease around the world.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday said Covid-19 deaths over the past month had surged 35%, adding 15,000 fatalities were reported in the previous week.

Now researchers claim they have discovered a vulnerability, a “weak spot”, across all variants that could help develop a more targeted anti-body treatment.

The study, which was published on Thursday, has been conducted by a joint team of researchers from Canada’s University of British Columbia – led by Dr Sriram Subramaniam, a professor at the Faculty of Medicine – and the University of Pittsburgh, US – led by Dr Mitko Dimitrov and Dr Wei Li.

It was published as a peer-reviewed article in the journal Nature Communications.

Understanding the study

According to the article published on the study, researchers used cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) to reveal the atomic-level structure of the vulnerable spot on the virus’ spike protein, known as an epitope.

This powerful imaging technology uses beams of electrons to visualise the shapes of tissues and cells using ultra-cooling (“cryo”) techniques.

The coronavirus is 100,000 times smaller than the size of a pinhead and therefore it cannot be viewed under a regular microscope.

Subramanium, who did his MSc in Chemistry from IIT-Kanpur, said the antibodies attach to a virus in a specific manner, “like a key going into a lock”. However, when the virus mutates, the key no longer fits.

With a master key, antibodies that continue to neutralise the virus even after extensive mutations, he added.