Scientists around the world are coming together to find a cure for the deadly coronavirus, which has already infected more than a million people worldwide and caused death for 65,000 people.
The scientists behind the first-ever cloned mammal-Dolly the sheep- are reportedly in talks with the British government to start an investigation using immune cells from young and fit volunteers. These scientists also previously used immunity-building cell infusion therapy with cured cancer patients, and hope they can use the same method to fight the coronavirus.
It is important to note that one of the key challenges of fighting viral infection is to develop a cure that attacks the infected cells and not the healthy cells, said Dr. Brian Kelly, a senior strategic medical advisor.
He also added that patients who have successfully fought the virus had created antibodies against that virus, which prevents them from becoming infected again.
Using the Body's Natural Defenses against Viral Infection
The solution that scientists came up with is to use the body's natural defenses to viral infection in creating the treatment.
The donor T-cells do not identify invaders inside the body on strange lumps on the surface of the cells, which is different from healthy immune cells. But by detecting the abnormal metabolism of viruses, the T cells may identify these invaders.
After the donor cells detect the virus, they start to destroy it while also giving a signal to the rest of the immune system as an alien intrusion needs eradication.
According to Dr. Kelly, even if the virus mutated and returned inside the body, the infusion exercise could be repeated and would still work using this approach.
Dolly the Sheep
Dolly the sheep is a female Finn Dorset and lived from 1996 to 2003. She is the world's first clone of an adult mammal, produced by Ian Wilmut, a British developmental biologist and his colleagues of the Roslin Institute, near Edinburgh, Scotland.
Her birth is a significant milestone in science, dispelling decades of presumption that adult mammals cannot be cloned. It also brought several possible uses and misuses of mammalian cloning technology. So how does it works?
In cloning, scientists extract the DNA from the cell of an adult animal like cows -called the donor- is extracted and inserted into an egg cell of another cow. The nucleus of the egg cell is removed to accomplish cloning the donor.
The new embryo is then zapped with electricity so that it starts multiplying and becomes a blastocyst and then implanted into a surrogate mother. The resulting newborn will become the identical replica of the donor animal.
Read Also: Scientists Warn COVID-19 Could be Catastrophic to Great Apes As They Too Can Be Infected
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