![]() |
Image Credit: Fusion Medical Animation |
Researchers at Karolinska Institutet who studied SARS-CoV-2 variant BA.2.86, found that the new variant was not significantly more resistant to antibodies than several other variants that are circulating. The study also showed that antibody levels to BA.2.86 were significantly higher after a wave of XBB infections compared to before, suggesting that the vaccines based on XBB should provide some cross-protection to BA.2.86.
"We engineered a spike gene that matches that of the BA.2.86 variant and tested the blood of Stockholm blood donors (specifically those donations made very recently) to see how effective their antibodies are against this new variant. We found that although BA.2.86 was quite resistant to neutralizing antibodies, it wasn't significantly more resistant than a number of other variants that are also circulating", says Daniel Sheward, lead author of the study and Postdoctoral researcher in Benjamin Murrell's team at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology at Karolinska Institutet.