Population-wide immune responses to SARS-CoV-2: Insights from quantifying the antibody response

Understanding the humoral immune response to COVID-19 is critically important for characterizing and predicting the degree of immune protection from previous infection, vaccination, and other treatments including plasmapheresis. However, antibody titers and other common methods of quantifying antibody responses only provide a proxy measure of fundamental antibody parameters: affinity and concentration.

In this webinar, Prof. Adriano Aguzzi, from the University of Zurich, will outline how his team is addressing this challenge by introducing novel microfluidic assays to quantitatively profile the affinity and concentration of anti-COVID-19 antibodies in the serum of convalescent COVID-19 patients. These assays were deployed as part of a population-wide study of the antibody response in the city of Zurich, Switzerland, aiming to yield unique, quantitative, functional insights into the progression and patient-to-patient variability of the antibody response to SARS-CoV-2.

During this webinar, we will discuss:

  • The newly opened up possibility to profile antibody responses by quantifying the fundamental molecular parameters of affinity and concentration
  • The implications of observed inter-patient variability of the affinity and concentration of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2
  • The relevance of being able to quantify affinity and concentration to understanding functional immunity following infection, vaccination or plasmapheresis
  • The potential applications of affinity and concentration profiling to understand the impact of virus mutations on functional immunity
  • The potential applications of affinity and concentration profiling to autoimmune diseases and other conditions

Who should attend?

  • COVID-19 researchers
  • Immunologists
  • Vaccine developers
  • Gene therapy developers

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