As he discusses in this video, Prof. Sarel Fleishman of the Department of Biomolecular Sciences is supporting multiple lines of coronavirus research at Weizmann – and conducting his own. One reason COVID-19 has been so devastating is that no humans have ever been exposed to it and, thus, we have no antibodies to protect us. The body remembers viruses it’s faced before, and can fight it with such antibodies.
While Prof. Fleishman is helping to identify antibodies in patients who have recovered from COVID, his own lab is taking an additional and original approach: using computer design to develop completely new antibodies that can be mass-produced to fight coronavirus.