PNAS. Stay informed with live updates on the current COVID-19 outbreak and visit our coronavirus hub for more advice on prevention and treatment.Camelids — which are a group of mammals including camels, llamas, and alpacas — produce “conventional” antibodies in response to infection.
They also produce nanobodies, which are smaller antibodies. Researchers have been looking at these nanobodies as a potential treatment against COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic.
For instance, in February 2020, scientists at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden started a study that involved injecting the coronavirus’s spike protein into an alpaca in hopes of developing a treatment to fight COVID-19. After 60 days, blood samples from the alpaca showed that.