New technique determines effectiveness of COVID-19 antibodies.

MIT chemists have developed a new way to identify neutralizing antibodies in a blood sample by analyzing how antibodies interact with sugar molecules found on the surface of a viral protein. The technique could help reveal whether someone has neutralizing antibodies against viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 and determine how well current vaccines might protect against emerging variants of the virus. The researchers created a panel of commercially available lectins, which bind to the sugar molecule at the very end of a sugar chain as it dangles from a protein, and used them to create a distinctive "fingerprint" for each antibody.