Paediatricians’ blood is used to create new treatments for RSV and the common cold

In the fight against common childhood diseases, scientists have turned to an unusual source: the blood of pediatricians. It turns out that this is a treasure trove of powerful antibodies that can be used as preventive treatment. These have even outperformed approved antibody treatments against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and a common cold virus.

Pediatricians are almost constantly exposed to respiratory viruses, making them a potentially underexplored resource in the search for highly potent antibodies against such pathogens. Although antibody therapies are available to prevent infections such as RSV—which infects nearly all children by age 2 and can trigger severe breathing difficulties—they only neutralize some strains. But a wider-acting treatment may now be on the cards.

A team including Hui Zhai at the Children’s Hospital of Chongqing Medical University examined the blood of 10 pediatricians who had worked at the hospital for over a decade. From this, the researchers discovered 56 potent antibodies against RSV from the paediatricians’ immune cells.

The researchers then generated artificial versions of these antibodies and tested them in the laboratory, finding that three were particularly active against a variety of RSV strains. One of the three also neutralized human metapneumovirus, which belongs to the same virus family as RSV and is a common cause of the common cold, but can also cause serious illness in some children.

Subsequent tests in mice and rats showed that injections of these three pediatrician-derived antibodies, either alone or in combination, stopped the animals from developing symptoms when infected with RSV or human metapneumovirus. In fact, the pediatrician antibodies were up to 25 times better at blocking RSV than existing antibodies called nirsevimab and clesrovimab, and they neutralized a wider range of strains.

This makes sense because it is common knowledge among paediatricians that they become increasingly resistant to respiratory viruses during their career, says Trent Calcutt at Port Macquarie Base Hospital in Australia. “I’ve been working with pediatric patients for 10 years now, and in the first few years I’d probably get two to three notable respiratory illnesses per year, and now I can go a year without getting any.”

Calcutt believes the pediatrician-derived antibodies show enough promise to warrant further testing in human clinical trials. “There are certainly alien interventions out there, so I think this one is worth considering,” he says.

Currently, there are two ways to protect infants from RSV. One is to give a vaccine during pregnancy, which protects babies when they are first born. The other is to give them an injection of nirsevimab or clesrovimab, which neutralize the virus if a child gets it, thus helping to prevent severe symptoms. But these only work against certain strains of RSV.

Nirsevimab and clesrovimab were similarly developed by screening the blood of adults who had previously been infected with RSV but who did not work in healthcare. This identified antibodies that the individual’s immune system had naturally produced against the virus. There is no approved vaccine or antibody treatment for human metapneumovirus.