Discovery of MERS Virus Antibodies Could Lead to Treatments in Saudi Arabia

After over a week of sickness in Saudi Arabia, scientists have found natural human antibodies to the MERS virus. The next step is to develop a treatment for the fatal disease that has claimed the lives of almost 20 people in a week.

The severe respiratory disease causes a cough, fever, shortness of breath, and can even lead to pneumonia and kidney failure, resulting in 102 deaths since its discovery in September of 2012. A majority of the cases have been documented in Saudi Arabia.

Last week, the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health announced that they would be meeting with the World Health Organization, medical experts, and drug manufacturers to determine the status of the disease and whether any treatments or vaccines could be developed to halt its spread. In an international effort, scientists from the United States and China published their findings for MERS antibodies in two scientific journals on Monday.

Antibodies are proteins produced by the body's immune system when it detects harmful substances called antigens, and each type of antibody defends the body against one specific antigen, according to Medline Plus. The scientists' findings helped them determine that the antibodies prevented a key part of the MERS virus from attaching to receptors, which allows it to infect human cells.

For example, the Chinese scientists found MERS-4 and MERS-27--two antibodies that had the ability to block cells from becoming infected with the MERS virus in an experimental lab dish. The results were published in the journal Science Translational Medicine. The scientists found that "entry of MERS-CoV into target cells depends on binding of the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the viral envelope spike glycoprotein to the cellular receptor dipeptidyl peptidase 4 (DPP4)," according to the study's abstract.

The scientists from the U.S. published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences after they discovered seven neutralizing antibodies that could potentially offer long-term vaccines or treatments for MERS.

Hopefully the studies can help further expedite some sort of vaccination or treatment to help contain MERS, which officials are worried can infect an unprecedented amount of people when millions of Muslims participate in the Hajj later this year.